I’m reading midnight sun. Here’s a thread on that.

First up thank you @JasonZil , this is your fault.

I think what we really needed from Twilight was the perspective of a 90+ year old virgin.

Edward starts by equating high school to purgatory because, as established in the Twilight saga, he believes he needs to atone for his sins.

Midnight Sun’s first impression of our known characters.
Bella - the other boys at school want to bone her because she’s shiny and new
Rosalie - “thinking, as usual, about herself”
Emmett - simple and stupid
Jasper - “was...suffering”
Alice - thoughtful

I get that he’s a predator but this is super weird when you consider that he’s talking about a teenage girl and like murdering her for her “annoying” interest.

Lol he called Mike Newton “generically popular.” For context, in the movies this is Mike Newton.

“It was doubtful Mr. Banner, a man is no more than average intellect, would manage to pull out anything in his lecture that would surprise someone holding two medical degree.”

Edward has TWO medical degrees? Wait? What?

I’m very hung up on a recurring problem this book is having which is that Edward is a predator and giving him a voice is actually Quite Weird.

Oh I also meant that predator line quite literally. Like not just in the “this is a teenager and he is a 90+ year old creature “

This is followed by three pages of Edward figuring out how he is going to kill Bella Swan (upon first meeting her) and then her classroom and teacher. 20 people. Three pages of him planning out violent mass murder. He mentally maps it out.

“It would take me, at most, five second to end every life in this room.”

Ooh this revulsion is because it’s Bella’s fault that he suddenly wanted to mass murder a group of teenagers.

Also weird to refer to his classmates as “children” when he goes on to date and marry one like a year later.

Edward flees to Denali, to Tanya who thinks he’s come to accept her courtship and instead he lays in a snowbank and thinks about murdering Bella.

For presumably 6 days.

Edward returns to school and is horrified to learn that Bella hasn’t talked to anyone about him, like no one at all. Didn’t she notice his “black, murderous glare?” Surely she would’ve talked about him with the other “featureless...sheep.”

This is our romantic lead.

This, which is a recurring issue wherein Edward won’t allow himself to breathe around Bella because she smells too tasty, is legitimately hilarious and Meyer dedicates pages to this conundrum.

Also for those who are unfamiliar with Twilight, Edward is a telepath (idk how useful this will be but his “sister” Alice is a precog, and his “brother” Jasper is an empath) and Bella has a form of shielding that makes her impervious to their abilities.

Mike Newton is now “eyeing” Edward “sulfurously.”

“There was no making sense of this girl. She wasn’t like other humans.”

Ok, so far there is literally nothing novel about Bella Swan other than the fact that she invites Edwards bloodlust Mr. She’s-Not-Like-The-Other-Girls

She’s apparently unlike most humans because she’s “selfless” because she told a boy she just met in a Biology classroom that she decided to move to Washington so her recently remarried mother could travel freely with her new husband.

“She wasn’t the average martyr-she didn’t want an audience for her pain.”

After escaping the Biology classroom, Edward flees and “gasped at the clean, wet air outside as though it was a healing attar.”

The real love story here is between Meyer and the thesaurus. This prose is purple.

Emmett is hilariously cavalier about the possibility that Edward could and may kill Bella at any moment.

He’s like a slightly confused frat boy. “Dude worse comes to worse, you kill her? So what? What’s a dead girl?”

Ok that’s practically pornographic? And it’s not intended to be since it’s apparently about the last time Emmett killed a person.

The previous page even includes a reference to how Emmetts partner was out of town.

Everyone in his family is like “Edward, we can like leave so you don’t kill the police chiefs daughter in cold blood and maybe do a school massacre” and he’s like “nah.”

In response Carlisle is like “cool, well then I respect your privacy.”

Carlisle. Dude. People could die. Maybe press a little bit.

Edward runs across the parking lot and saves Bella from getting pancaked between two vehicles in the most obvious “I’m a vampire” moment in the book - by leaving his palm print in the side of a van and also thumping her fragile human head into the icy ground.

“A word I’ve never said before in the presence of a lady slid between my clenched teeth.”

What word was it Edward? Surreptitiously? Masochist? Pubic ? I am dying to know.

“Again I wished for Carlisle. My years of theoretical medical study were no match for his centuries of hands on medical practice.”

Edward are you a Doctor or not because I’m stick of this stolen valor bullshit

Weird reference but for some reason Carlisle has an undiscovered Childe Hassam oil painting that Edward terms “simple,” which is interesting I guess since Hassam is an American impressionist painter.

Edward is pre-planning to discredit Bella’s version of the events. But I mean, he feels like “a cad” so I guess that’s supposed to make the audience feel better.

Idk what this boy is doing but honestly even from his POV this comes wildly out of left field.

My voice grew more mocking,”nobody will believe that, you know.”

Our romantic lead, ladies, gentlemen and gentlethem

“But all afternoon I was gritting my teeth against the urge that had me yearning to ditch too—in order to go find the girl again.

Like a stalker. An obsessed stalker. An obsessed vampire stalker.”

Honestly wasn’t expecting them to just...say it.

For some reason Edward is preparing to (physically?) fight his family over Bella. I do not know why. Even inside the internal logic of his brain it is not clear that he likes her.

“Yes, I would fight for her. Against my family. I shuddered.”

He says they use the dining room as a “conference room” and idk why but that is terribly formal and funny to me.

The family conference they’re currently having by the way is one where they’re deciding whether or not to kill Bella in her sleep.

Two of the primary family members are vocally in favor of this. These people will some day be her in-laws.

“I’m going to love her someday, Jazz. I’ll be very put out with you if you don’t let her be.”

Oh that? That’s Alice explaining to Jasper that he can’t kill Bella cause one day they’ll be buds and it would bum her out and Alice has already a more compelling ship than Edward.

Alice just announces Edwards crush to the table which is a) a revelation to Edward and b) allows him to get ribbed by all of his siblings.

Things that suck about Jasper: that he’s a former Confederate soldier
Things that don’t suck about Jasper: his unwavering loyalty to Alice, his confidence in her confidence

This revelation, by the way, that Edward will someday turn Bella upsets him so much he decides to run to Seattle which is...138 miles away which vaguely reminds me of the dude I knew who once biked from NOLA to NYC to avoid his ex.

“Alice’s bleak vision filled my head, and I writhed internally with the agony it caused. Meanwhile, the monster in me was overflowing with glee, jubilant at the likelihood of his success. It sickened me.”

Edward continually refers to a “monster” inside of himself the way that Anastasia Steele would refer to her inner goddess.

I think #MidnightSun was a mistake, not in the sense that the Twilight series was a mistake but in the sense that giving voice to Edward was a mistake.

Edward is a predator, both in the sense that he is 104 years old and is going after a 17 year old girl, but also in the sense that he literally wants to kill her. Giving voice to this character really highlights both of these things, but namely the second one.

We know as the audience that Jessica Stanley has a thing for Edward but it gets really warped when in the perspective of Midnight Sun we see Edward go "well she wouldn't have a crush on me if she knew I could kill her huh" and it's like...uh, she was probably 15...wtf?

The #MidnightSun perspective also really highlights the alienness of the Cullens, the way that it is really a struggle for them to view humanity as anything other than food and that's weird? They're functionally Bella's inlaws and future family.

What I'm saying is that there really isn't a specific reason that this book should have been written, no one really needed this perspective and it gives us insight the audience did not need to have. Can't wait for the creeper "I'm watching you sleep" scenes.

also in case you were wondering, oh how is the Twilight fandom at large responding to this, idk but here's how one of the top rated Goodreads reviews starts:

Chapter 5 begins with a call back to Chapter 1.

“HIGH SCHOOL. PURGATORY NO LONGER, IT WAS NOW PURELY HELL. Torment and fire...yes, I had both.”

Bella meets him back in Biology again for the first time after he is rude to her and is polite and he’s blown away. “Had she forgotten?...Could she possibly have forgiven me for not following through on my promise?”

“Did I love her? I did not think so.” Honey we are 14% into this book.

ok

Edward has, in hell (high school), “lumped his torments into four categories:”
- “her scent”
- “her silence”
- thirst
- curiosity

“But why would she have to play a role? She was one of them—a human teenager. Only...she occasionally didn’t behave like one.”

The example is that she offers to work with a stoner in their Biology class and this is proof that she’s “kinder than most of these cannibals.”

“Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave—she was good through and through.”

This is in part informed by the fact that Bella lies and says she’d go to Comic Con to save another kid some embarrassment.

Bella apparently has “abnormal maturity” which is a creepy thing to say when you’re the 104 year old who is kind of in love with her and is 100% grooming speak.

If an older guy tells a teenage girl she’s “mature for her age “ it’s always grooming speak.

cool he also identifies her as talking about her mom like she's "a parent speaking of a child." So I guess we've also thrown in some parentification.

fine

Edward is now imagining Bella getting married (not to him, I guess) and "the pain I felt while I imagined this future reminded me of the agony of transformation. It consumed me."

To be clear, he has no actual claim to her. At this juncture, Edward has spoken maybe 100 words to Bella, none of which are even the request for a date, let alone like an admission of affection or love.

OK, so it's literally this cycle for multiple pages:

1. Edward is violently jealous that someone is interested in Bella.
2. "no, no, no....I could not do this. She was too breakable, too good, too precious to deserve this."

Rinse. Repeat. PAGES OF THIS.

“I measured Tyler Crowley as competition, knowing it was reprehensible to do so. He seemed tediously average and unremarkable, but what did I know of Bella’s preferences? Maybe she liked average boys.”

Sorry Tyler Crowley.

Oh of course, the creepy stalking begins because of the fear of “A meteorite smashing through her roof and crushing her in her bed?”

He follows this by saying that he is going to take a closer look. As in he breaks into her home to watch her sleep. For her safety. After establishing she’s at no risk.

“I was repulsed by myself as I watched her toss again. How was I any better than some sick peeping Tom? I wasn’t any better. I was much, much worse.”

Bella is 17.

He’s going to leave, but stays when he realizes she talks in her sleep. He rationalizes this with “what were human rules to me, after all? How many did I ignore on a daily basis?”

He’s talking about the illegal documents for their existence, the insider trading that apparently funds their lifestyle, and of course the murder. What, he asks, is a “little misdemeanor” in light of this?

“Could a dead, frozen heart break? It felt as though mine would.”

Bella, in her sleep says his name and asks him not to leave, and he like has a revelation.

Uh, k.

After this he begins plotting.

He asks her to join him to sit at lunch and when she points out that it’s different he says “I decided as long as I’m going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”

God the “we shouldn’t be friends” talks while he tried to be friends with her is even weirder from his perspective.

I don’t think Edwards problem is that he’s old fashioned

The Cullen "family" love stories:
- Rosalie loved Emmett's "honesty" and he her "beauty"
- Alice foresaw her meeting with Jasper for 28 years, Jasper has confidence in her confidence
- Esme fell in love with Carlisle as a child and he "found he could return that love."

this series has a thing with like child brides, i guess?

(Esme grew up, but she never stopped loving Carlisle and then one day he turned him when she was a legal adult and it would not have been creepy for them to be together I guess)

Edward is excited to discover that Bella, the girl he "loves" has something in common with him: her favorite Debussy song is "Clair de Lune."

Or, y'know, the only Debussy song she can name is Clair de Lune because as established she will lie to make people feel more comfy.

He asks if her mom would approve of her partner, as long as they made her happy, regardless of age and it's clear in his internal thoughts that he's referring to him and this is a grooming conversation and it's gross and weird.

"Do you think I could be scary?" I asked her, trying to make her smile a little"

He asks....having bullied her into a car with him. Alone. Yep. Smile. That is what she's doing.

Edward and Emmett go black bear hunting and have like a man talk about like love wherein Emmett is like "so like, you love her" and Edward says "I don't see the point of the rest of the world without her anymore."

No see, cause Edwards love is chaste.

after the bear hunt, Edward goes back to watch Bella sleep, but he brought oil to properly grease her window so that it doesn't squeak when it opens cause he doesn't want to get caught.

this is our romantic lead.

his first thought on seeing her, asleep in her bed as he creeps in having oiled her window so that it doesn't squeak, is that she sleeps "like a small child" which considering their age difference is pretty accurate I guess.

Jasper has two guests coming, Peter and Charlotte which is exciting because it's the potential to meet two new vampires.

"I did not see much of Jasper's guests for the two sunny days that they were in Forks." SERIOUSLY EDWARD.

Mike asks Bella out; she says no, because Jessica is interested in him so we're treated to front row seats to Mike's thoughts of Jessica RE: Meyer.

"She's cute, though, I guess. Decent body--bigger boobs than Bella's. A bird in the hand..."

Instead of meeting the two vampires, by the way, Edward just follows Bella around like a shadow. Right now he's just sitting in a tree watching her read Jane Austen which is to him, FASCINATING.

She falls asleep and whispers the name Edmund, a reference to Edmund Bertram the main character of Mansfield Park (who is not played by Hugh Grant but by Jonny Lee Miller or Blake Ruston, depending on your adaptation)

"But I certainly would not trespass on her privacy the way a peeping tom would have. I was here for her protection, not to leer at her in the way Mike Newton no doubt would, were he agile enough to move through the treetops. I would not treat her so crassly."

There's an implication here, a belief that somehow this stalking behavior is somehow chaste? I don't personally buy it.

Edward is so obsessed with watching Bella sleep that we get four rushed pages of interaction with two new characters - backstory into Jasper and his maker Maria! Jaspers defection! "she considered it a minor detail that she had once planned to kill him;" an incident in Calgary?

-- before they leave the story and Edward goes to follow a group of teenage girls dress shopping.

I'm legitimately so mad we had a chance to learn more about Jasper's back story and we instead had a long extended section of Edward laying in a tree watching forlornly as Bella slept next to a Jane Austen compendium.

"Because I'd just realized that I could not kill the fiend named Lanny. The only thing in this moment that I wanted more than to commit a highly justifiable murder was this girl."

Continued things of adult women being attracted to supposedly teenage Edward.

The hostess is so thirsty for Edward she thinks “maybe I’ll write my number on his plate with marinara” which is peak straight people flirting.

She’s eating the mushroom ravioli now while Edward just watches her but don’t worry we now have the cover image reference. Remember the cover image? It’s this:

“Suddenly, as she ate, a strange comparison entered my head. For just a second, I saw Persephone, pomegranate in hand. Dooming herself to the underworld.”

“Is that who I was? Hades himself covering springtime, stealing it, condemning it to endless night. I tried unsuccessfully to shake the impression.”

Our Persephone now washes down a bite of her mushroom ravioli with some Coke.

“For the second time tonight, I confessed to an intended murder.” Edward, chill. You’re just having dinner.

hearing that Jacob Black has told the legends of the Cullen's to Bella "I suppose this meant I was now free to slaughter the small, defenseless tribe on the coastline, were I so inclined. Ephraim and his pack of protectors were long dead."

I can’t be sure but I think Carlisle is about to go murder Lanny.

“Someone like Bella ought to have a protector, a guardian angel. She deserved that.”

He says, staring at her sleeping body creepily.

girl. I need you to wake up.

Do you ever have to mentally check to remember if a book is written around 9/11

Carlisle didn’t kill Lanny, he just got him arrested by the cops? Also apparently Lanny is short for “Orlando?”

K

"But she couldn't honestly believe that her human feelings, the fruition of seventeen short mortal years, could be stronger than this demolition ball of emotion that had wrecked me after a century of emptiness?"

This book spends a lot of time telling me that Bella is extraordinary but not like....making her extraordinary.

They’re going to go out and he tells her to tell her dad. She asks why.

“To give me some small incentive to bring you back,” I hissed.

This is a book about a stalker and a creep.

Girls love when you think of them as temporary

And they say romance is dead.

“Savor the memory, Edward, I told myself grimly, and keep your hands to yourself.”

Made sure @thenewarucan read the Persephone quote and she has confirmed that she would have thrown the book.

Rosalie evidently hates Bella because of “jealousy.”

Edward no longer feels guilty about watching Bella sleep at night. “It felt like the correct course of action.”

Bella’s favorite color is brown.

She’s a Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice fan. I don’t know if there’s a thing to this, but there always seems to be a strict divide on Mr Darcy preferences.

Oh and Edwards favorite color is also brown because it’s the color of her eyes.

It somehow feels trite that Bella’s favorite place is the library, as though she functions as an author standin

...and title drop

“There was something very...engaging about Jacob Black’s mind. Pure and open...I felt suddenly very sorry that this particular boy was born my enemy. His was a rare kind of mind that was easy to be inside. Restful, almost.”

I blame just the sheer amount of gay media I’m reading right now but...G A Y.

He tells his mother that he’s watching her sleep every night and her response is...a choice.

To confirm, Bella has not been saved from an errant asteroid strike.

Continuing trend of Bella-as-author-standin

Edward claims these dreams are not typical of a typical teenager; Edward this is basically exactly what I wanted to do when I was 17. This is bog standard “I’m going to college for a degree in English literature.”

“I wondered if she saw a glimpse of me in her future.” Dude you have known her for max a month. But also you’re teenagers so probably.

“One too many pomegranate seeds, and she was bound to the underworld with me. No way back. Springtime, sunlight, family, future, soul, all stolen from her.”

It’s kind of important to understand for the purposes of this viewpoint that Edward has a very Judeo-Christian viewpoint and believes, very deeply, in the concept of the soul.

It’s a constant, recurring plot point in the book series that Edward won’t turn Bella (even when her being human is frankly imperiling him and his family and herself) because he doesn’t want to damn her. It’s a thing.

“Yeah? What do you mean her wishes?”

tw: suicidal ideation but we just get three pages of Edward explaining that killing himself isn’t an option for some reason

Dude, you sparkle. Literally.

“The human faces were so completely different from ours —their dull, pitted skin, their poorly molded features, so rounded and lumpy, the mottled colors of their imperfect flesh. The clouded rheumy eyes must be nearly blind, I thought”

cool

The way Edward and the rest of his siblings talk about humans is hecking weird and makes the fact that he wants to bone one somehow even weirder like he found a particularly smart dog.

Siobhan details:
- “largest woman”
- “profoundly female”
- “aggressively, forcefully female”
- “intensely female”
- “larger female”

Edward, you’re just stepping into the sunlight buddy.

Dude is convinced she is going to be terrified or repelled by his diamond sparkly skin. I cannot stress how much time is spent on this belief.

“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful—never imagined something so beautiful could exist.” - Bella, who is into the sparkles

O M G

I guess this is the murder equivalent of reciting baseball statistics to increase your physical stamina.

how am I still only at 52%

"I'm the world's best predator aren't I?..Everything about me invites you in--my voice, my face, even my smell."

dude, then why were you worried she was going to be horrified by the very sight of you if you know you're gorgeous

"As if you could outrun me." I laughed at the thought, the grotesque comedy of the image in my head.

--- again with the serial killer shit edward

she's just chilling and he's having a tantrum about how he's an inhumanly beautiful killing machine. totes normal. he's 105 years of baby

Dudes be entranced by shit they can’t understand.

"This was a dangerous path to even hint at. Hades and his pomegranate. How many toxic seeds had I already infected her with?"

that is not how seeds work

"Don't be! It's not only your company I crave! Never forget that. Never forget I am more dangerous to you than I am to anyone else."

Seriously half of their interactions are Edward going "look I think you're tasty and I want to eat you" and Bella being just like intensely stupid and Edward finding this to mean that she's like...pure of heart or perfect or something, I don't even know.

"I'm your brand of heroin" is such a terrible line and I honestly forgot it was in the original Twilight.

Bella is apparently like this Quaker painting. Maybe.

"the blush on your cheeks is lovely" has a different connotation when you want to eat the person because of their blood.

"I imagined tasting her...draining her.

I'd had enough experience to know what the relief would feel like, if I were to utterly quench my most bestial need."

Is apparently what's going through his head during this "romantic" scene.

"Her blood would sooth my aching throat, erasing all the months of fire. It would feel as if I had never burned for her; the alleviation of pain would be total."

blah blah blah i would murder her it would be totes awesome and I would feel REALLY bad about it I promise

"And I think you can understand, to an extent. Though as you are not addicted to any illegal substances, you probably can't empathize completely...But..."

which is worse, the illegal drug references or the Hades/Persephone metaphors?

"What kills me the most is that Hades is the most decent husband among the Greek Gods

He's a nerd and accountant who loves his wife. He actually listens to his wife. Which is more than you can say for Edward and listening to her desires." @thenewarucan on the Hades metaphors

Sex. He’s talking about sex.

Every time I open Midnight Sun on my Kindle, mentally I hear the chorus to Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun. Every single time.

This book has some purple prose but damn, the way Edward talks about this kiss feels a bit much.

“I noticed the unpleasant return of a few predatory reactions—an excess of venom in my mouth, a tightening in my core—but these were superficial responses. While perhaps it would be unfair to say that rationality was in total control, at least it was not a...” (1/2)

“feeding passion that made that statement by true. A much more agreeable passion held me in its thrall.”

Edward dear, you have a boner.

You think I’m joking.

“Besides, friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” I concluded, quoting the Ad council slogan. It was a dated reference for her; she’d been only three when the campaign was launched.

—Edward that is a creepy as hell thing to think after making out with a girl

This is the song on the radio as they leave (they talk about how the best music is from the 50s because they’re both “old souls” or whatever)

For those unfamiliar with Twilight canon, Edward is born in 1901 in Chicago, dies/is turned by Carlisle in a hospital in 1918 at a hospital where he is afflicted with Spanish influenza.

The story of Emmett’s turning. I don’t love this phrasing, because of how Edward views vampiric turning I literally don’t know why he would view it this way.

Rosalie finds Emmett barely alive after a bear attack; meaning he ever consents to being turned.

The reason Alice and Jasper’s love story is better is the first vision Alice gets when she wakes up after turning into a vampire, born an amnesiac, is his face and his love and it’s all she ever knows is that he’s waiting for her and he loves her.

haha get it I watch you sleep

ew

Bella is, by the way, only horrified by the idea that Edward has overheard something when she is sleeping and not that he WATCHES HER SLEEP EVERY NIGHT WITHOUT HER CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE

“Don’t be self-conscious. If I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of it.”

Please. Please have some shame.