I couldn't stomach it any longer and decided to call it quits and thanked goodness that I had borrowed the book after a friend's great urging that I should read it. Actually she isn't a friend but a co-worker, I felt like hitting her in the head with it for subjecting me to it when I had a pretty good suspicion of what it was about. If anything I can predict how it ends it's so over-cliched.
I sit here wondering why everyone is so excited about this book series, actually a friend and I have sat and wondered why this has been allowed to go so far when the idea has been done over and over again, even more why does this get a movie?! What is the appeal. And we've figured it's the whole prefect guy dark and mysterious who the girl falls in love with through physical attraction and his sudden desire to ignore her. (much like how the girl goes for the bad boy who treats everyone like crap but really has a good boy heart and treats her a little better but she endures his bad moments because she's in love....excuse me while I vomit.)
And then it's the whole refusal to go with his instincts to bite and suck the blood of a person who just so happens by some really really bizarre stroke of luck to have really potent blood or smell that drives them crazy. HA! that happens so much in stories I think it's more rare to have weak blood!
Someone will argue that it's the symbolism of what his refusal to suck blood means, to go against his instinct is symbolically going against the primal want to have sex. My friend says it much better than I do.
This is his blog entry with contributions with a few of our conversations.
Quote:
Upon examination of both stories ["Twilight" and "Dead Until Dark"], it can be safely said that they both feed or rather wish for a more ideal sort of man in that this man would fight against his own nature, lust, and desire. By this notion the vampire man seems to be a metaphor for a regular type of man who is consumed by his lust and hormones (i.e. his sex drive). Thus, for a vampire to fight against his nature of wanting to suck and drink the blood of the main female protagonist he becomes a more ideal man that women want – repressed and controllable.
Thinking of this story from another point of view, the vampire upon the female readers mind does seem to hit upon a hidden type of rape fantasy. In that the human female doesn't want to be drained dry and the act of a vampire biting and draining blood is sexual both by its nature and metaphorical sense; exchange of fluids and the guy sticking something long and thin into the woman. Yet, when the woman is taken to a secluded place and the fangs are sunk into her neck, she finally submits.
After all, men think about sex in the same way that vampires think about blood, would you say so?
I must agree, reason I'm sick of this stuff.
