"Explorations" of Bree's Novella
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:34 pm
Welcome to Bree's Explorations -- an Annex of the Explorations thread in the Quench forum. I'm setting this up so we can continue our Explorations style of discussion while keeping the original thread spoiler-free for now. For anyone not familiar with that thread, I'm just going to repost the Serious Discussion Thread Posting Guidelines it opens with:
* * * * *
Welcome to the Explorations thread. This thread is called "Explorations" rather than something more specific to leave room for the conversation to go where it leads us -- and maybe also to make a point: This is a thread for EXPLORING our different responses to Stephenie's story, NOT DEBATING them. Long experience has convinced me that the most interesting ideas get aired when people are genuinely interested in exchanging views, trying to explore and understand other people's starting point, rather than defending their own. So no fixed topic, but a few Ground Rules:
1. Courtesy is obligatory. Reread your post for tone before you hit the submit button: things often come out sharper than they sounded in your head. Go the extra mile to be conciliatory: it makes all the difference.
2. This includes courtesy to the author. Intelligent criticism of Stephenie's writing is welcome, and an essential part of the conversation; just be sure you put it nicely.
3. There are no right and wrong views here, just different perspectives. You don't get points for out-arguing other people. If someone else's reasoning doesn't make sense to you, ask them to explain their thinking to you -- don't attack their illogic. Keep an open mind. They may surprise you.
4. We're not here to change each other's views. We're here to understand them -- and explain our own. Please keep that in mind as you write. If we all agreed, think how boring it would be!
5. Respect each other. We all come here with different experience and expertise (whether formal or informal). Be appreciative of other people's and modest about your own. This can be especially important where the ideas of formal literary criticism are lurking at the edges of the conversation (ditto clinical psychology, another discipline with obvious bearing on many TW discussions). An academic perspective can be extremely illuminating, but it doesn't ipso facto trump all others.
6. Have fun! That's what we're here for.
* * * * *
Ok, so I'm going to start by copying in a couple of pages of discussion that recently took off on the Discrepancies thread, starting with a post of mine:
December Wrote:
Well, I was wondering about something different.
The implication of Bree's story is that you can hurt a vampire simply by burning them.
And that seems to me, if not actually inconsistent with what we understood in Twilight, at least a bit of a game-changer. At any rate, it seriously alters our original impression of vampires as these magnificent, impervious, marble inhumans.
Twilight makes it seem as though to harm a vampire you have to have enough strength (or werewolf superpowers) to rip them into two first. Burning the bits was just a way of making sure they're destroyed for keeps. But what Riley reportedly does to Diego, anyone could do. Ok, I grant you it would be hard for ordinary mortals to hold a vampire still; but if fire can do damage to a vampire while they're still whole, well...there must be ways of sneaking up on one with a flame thrower or something. Not saying it would be easy: but once you picture vampires as vulnerable to fire, we're in a different imaginative universe. They're just that bit less divinely untouchable. And I'm wondering why Stephenie chose to do it...
* * * * *
Welcome to the Explorations thread. This thread is called "Explorations" rather than something more specific to leave room for the conversation to go where it leads us -- and maybe also to make a point: This is a thread for EXPLORING our different responses to Stephenie's story, NOT DEBATING them. Long experience has convinced me that the most interesting ideas get aired when people are genuinely interested in exchanging views, trying to explore and understand other people's starting point, rather than defending their own. So no fixed topic, but a few Ground Rules:
1. Courtesy is obligatory. Reread your post for tone before you hit the submit button: things often come out sharper than they sounded in your head. Go the extra mile to be conciliatory: it makes all the difference.
2. This includes courtesy to the author. Intelligent criticism of Stephenie's writing is welcome, and an essential part of the conversation; just be sure you put it nicely.
3. There are no right and wrong views here, just different perspectives. You don't get points for out-arguing other people. If someone else's reasoning doesn't make sense to you, ask them to explain their thinking to you -- don't attack their illogic. Keep an open mind. They may surprise you.
4. We're not here to change each other's views. We're here to understand them -- and explain our own. Please keep that in mind as you write. If we all agreed, think how boring it would be!
5. Respect each other. We all come here with different experience and expertise (whether formal or informal). Be appreciative of other people's and modest about your own. This can be especially important where the ideas of formal literary criticism are lurking at the edges of the conversation (ditto clinical psychology, another discipline with obvious bearing on many TW discussions). An academic perspective can be extremely illuminating, but it doesn't ipso facto trump all others.
6. Have fun! That's what we're here for.
* * * * *
Ok, so I'm going to start by copying in a couple of pages of discussion that recently took off on the Discrepancies thread, starting with a post of mine:
December Wrote:
Well, I was wondering about something different.
The implication of Bree's story is that you can hurt a vampire simply by burning them.
And that seems to me, if not actually inconsistent with what we understood in Twilight, at least a bit of a game-changer. At any rate, it seriously alters our original impression of vampires as these magnificent, impervious, marble inhumans.
Twilight makes it seem as though to harm a vampire you have to have enough strength (or werewolf superpowers) to rip them into two first. Burning the bits was just a way of making sure they're destroyed for keeps. But what Riley reportedly does to Diego, anyone could do. Ok, I grant you it would be hard for ordinary mortals to hold a vampire still; but if fire can do damage to a vampire while they're still whole, well...there must be ways of sneaking up on one with a flame thrower or something. Not saying it would be easy: but once you picture vampires as vulnerable to fire, we're in a different imaginative universe. They're just that bit less divinely untouchable. And I'm wondering why Stephenie chose to do it...