(no subject)

[olivermoss]

After coming across a historical marker sign and having it turn out to be about Twilight, I decided to finally watch the movie. I decided that I needed to watch it understand modern culture. The world building made no sense and the plot was incoherent. I guess whatever was such catnip to people was in the books, which I wont read. But man, I've watched some seriously jank and low production values genre stuff for reasons, but this was a hot mess by my standards. The baseball scenes? WTF? Also, when I saw images of Edward in that baseball outfit I assumed it was an edit due to a fandom in-joke or maybe something from a commercial.

Also, the obvious Mormon coding started jumping out at me way earlier than I expected.

The bits with Oregon City in it were barely there, but other scenes were obviously Oregon and not Washington. I will also never get over this whole 'vampires are obvious in sunlight so Washington is safe because it's so rainy except for a few days' thing because it is so far from reality it's insane. Like, the world building is pure nonsense, but also what is this weird and geographically incoherent version of the PNW they are showing?

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

But Alice/Bella was wonderful! <3 <3 <3

[olivermoss]

Alice was pretty cool. Some of the other characters has acting or directing choices that were just baffling.

[mistressofmuses]

The fucking vampire baseball, man.

The whole thing is bonkers. I read the first book and watched the first two movies, and I cannot say I get it. I can recognize that it IS catnip to a lot of people, but it is not catnip to ME, and I can't suspend my disbelief around every aspect of the story, characters, worldbuilding, writing style, internal mythology, etc. to try and understand WHY it had the appeal that it did.

Though I guess there is something to be said for having first-hand knowledge of how weird it honestly is.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, in the opening scene of what I'm writing I have my vampire in a pea coat and... I'm changing that! It's a very, very different pea coat from the film but since books are words I have a feeling that those words will make some people think that I'm trying to signal that he's an Edward Cullen expy.

First hand knowledge is good just to navigate stuff sometimes. Is the discourse insane or have a point? What other media is a deliberate reference? How not to accidentally have similar stuff because both of you are tapping into the same millenial coded stuff and pea coats are just a great way to have a tailored look without being formal. I don't plan to watch the other two, but honestly it might be a good idea to.

[mistressofmuses]

I do not blame you for changing it! Like you said, a pea coat is just a great way to indicate a certain vibe and look, but... you don't want it to seem like a deliberate reference or indicator toward Edward, haha.

Aren't there like... five movies? Four books adapted, but they split the last movie into two parts? I am almost certain I only saw the first two. And only read the first book. I feel like I should experience the whole thing just for the pop culture knowledge, but... so far I've gotten by based on what I've learned by osmosis.

(Not quite the same, but one time I came up with what I thought was a somewhat over the top example of the type of worldbuilding that I found tedious as a writer... and it 100% sounded like I was vagueing a specific novel that had just come out, because that book focused on almost EXACTLY the thing I'd pulled out of my ass for an example. But having not read said book at that point, I had no idea!)

[olivermoss]

Cultural osmosis, especially in fandom spaces, can be very weird. Maybe I only need to see the first two or so, because I'm sure the relevance drops off a lot.

Yeah, later in my writing process I'll want some beta readers just in case of accidental stuff. it's good to not be too worried about that stuff, but also like the pea coat thing would have been confusing.

[mistressofmuses]

It's true... sometimes a particular fanon interpretation takes off and kind of becomes what you see and absorb from the outside.

I feel like at least some of the weirdest bits of the Twilight saga came at the very end. I wonder if you could just bookend it - skip all the middle shit and watch the second part of the last one. (Though that's where some of the weirdest stuff was, it's also the stuff that even fans seem to not love. So it's true that the earlier parts are probably where some of the most relevant cultural stuff is contained.)

True. You don't want to worry about seeming too close to some other thing - especially a thing you don't even know much about! - but also, good to make sure nothing unintentionally seems like a reference to something that it's not.

[olivermoss]

I've watched Contrapoints video on Twilight a few times so I know some of the crazy stuff, but sometimes there's nothing like actually watching the canon everyone is talking about, writing about, making fanfic of, writing about the fanfic, etc to put things in perspective. Also, like the pea coat iconicness totally missed me. I'll probably go movie by movie, but get more of my own stuff done first.

[mistressofmuses]

I need to watch her video on it... I think it's been languishing in my watch later playlist forever at this point.

But yeah, hearing second-hand never really quite captures things the same as experiencing it directly does.

[olivermoss]

Also, it's just taken as given that most people have read/watched the series so it's not meant to be a replacement. Not just her video, but most places and a lot of crit just assumes knowledge of things that, despite all my time consuming media for the purpose of understanding crit, I don't always know

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, that's a good point. I've run into a lot of criticism of that nature - where I'm interested in something examining xyz trope or whatever, but whatever it is I'm watching or reading expects that I also already have complete knowledge of every canon mentioned. And sometimes that's fair, but this is the case even with stuff that sort of seems to be portraying itself as a primer.
(And that can just be a skill issue; too many people just have a poor understanding of what a 101 exploration (or even a more advanced discussion that doesn't suppose total familiarity with specifics) Other times it just feels like a weird assumption.)

[olivermoss]

It can be really hard to judge what level to aim for, and people who know a lot about a thing tend to way overestimate where the floor is. And if you overexplain then some of your audience dips because they think it's too basic of an essay, video or otherwise.

I still remember vividly HBomberguy being about to explain who James Rolfe is and then going 'wait, I don't need to explain that' and I was very annoyed.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah. It is a difficult thing to judge. (I know there's an xkcd comic to that effect, about how much people overestimate what a layperson knows about specialized knowledge.) So yeah, it's a fine line between giving a useful introduction to a subject and not alienating the people who DO know something about it.

Right?! Sometimes I DO need the explanation, actually!