Take it w/ a grain of salt, and enjoy.

Laruent is supposed to be darker, which is convenient since he is of ambiguous morality at this point in the story. In the book he is olive toned, but in the movie he is black. That kind of didn’t sit well w/ me when all the ‘good’ vampires were the whitest white ever.

Then there is the issue w/ the Native Americans, which I will get into more when I blog NM, having just finished it. Meyer talks about how her beliefs heavily influencer her writing. Then I read where high up prophets preach things like “be sure to marry Native women off w/ white men so they can have lighter children who will be more delightful”, and see pictures from said prophets comparing the children w/ their darker and less “delightful” parents. I am not saying all of Mormonism is racist, I know many incredible and wonderful Mormons who would be appalled at such things, but I get the feeling of dark= not delightful, and white being perfect, which falls in line w/ the whitewashing attitude of that prophet.

I am going to talk more about this later, but it has been grating on me again and again. Authors don’t do anything on accident.

Here the point is because Bella (I’m assuming she’s white because she was in the film, and because I expect someone would have mentioned her being a WOC) fetishises Edward’s whiteness as being a part of his perfection. whilst I’m sure people can talk about him being a corpse and no doubt of some Celtic stock or other, why is it assumed that all white people come in two shades: pale and super-almost-snow-white? I’m just irritated that pure snowy whiteness is always played up, but never with the accompanying rosyness or blotchyness or freckles. Or that you can’t have white people who are just average white, or a little olive complected, or hell, Mediterranean-looking. It’s really bizarre that when skin tone is mentioned in reference to someone being white, it’s always to a pure snowyness that really doesn’t represent most people. It’s just a little too convenient that vampire = perfect white skin = shinysparkly = sex god.

But, more importantly there don’t seem to be any POC vampires (I’d love there to have been some, or vampries who are anything other than pure snowy white, cos that cliche gets old FAST), and since the vampires seem to be the default ‘heroes/good guys’ it’s quite worrying that the POC in the series are literally always the ‘other’ the Werewolves playing a secondary role. This could have been played to effect as a moral about racism, but that requires sensitivity to these themes.

And as for the coffee: I think it necessary to put it in in passing for the same reason I’d find it unusual if no characters smoke: writing a story is like painting a picture, you have to make an effort to add detail that makes it look believable. Whilst I’m not personally enamoured of either, a series where neither is even present in the background would break my suspension of disbelief because it wouldn’t feel real. Part of writing a world is writing characters that wouldn’t necessarily act the way you do, or would agree with.

no, no racist dog whistles there.

not in the least.

/snark

The comment on the continual use of “white” and “pale” etc… is really interesting. Llencelyn is right, though, there is a deep racist undertone to Mormonism. I think it’s probably another way Mormonism has influenced the books.

I preface this by saying I am no expert, but the takedown of the books by the former Mormon that I read indicated that this is actually a very very prevalent theme in Mormonism. So…you’re not imagining the connection.