Eclipse & Breaking Dawn Talk

[Distracted]

Jacob = partying and drugs???? There is no lesson, but if there were a lesson, Jacob symbolizes all that is good and wholesome and Edward symbolizes danger and the irresponsible choice.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that in my eyes Edward represents the more difficult but potentially more rewarding long-term option (Eternal youth, superhuman strength, spending eternity with a man she loves) and Jacob represents the easier, more immediate, "fun" option. There's nothing wrong with the easier option. Many people go for it. It feels good. It can make her happy. But she may not get as far in the end, depending on what her goals are. The longer term and more difficult option has its drawbacks as well. She's got to delay gratification, for one thing, and give up forever on the easier option and a lot of other things. I guess I probably see it that way because I took the hard road instead of the easier road in my own life.

[justTripn]

The lesson isn't hard work. I didn't notice anyone doing any work at all in that movie. As one reviewer put it, their full-time job seems to be to talk about their feelings (and ,of course, fight hordes of enemy vampires). The lesson is "follow your heart." Bella must have Edward at any cost because he is her soulmate. So Bella doesn't work towards her goal, she suffers towards it, because she simply can't live without him. As for waiting, Bella doesn't want to wait. That is Edward's idea, and I think Edward is going to cave.

Also Jake most definitely isn't drugs and partying, he is a basically good person and is treated very sympathetically. That might be the most appealing part of this movie, that there is really nothing wrong with the rival, he just isn't "the one." Despite this, he still deserves some respect. And gets it!

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Bella must have Edward at any cost because he is her soulmate.

How can you be a soulmate with someone who doesn't have a soul? Or do these vamps have souls? (I haven't read or seen any Twilight)

So this Edward is a vamp, and Jacob is a werewolf, right? The best partner ought to be Jacob then. He's a normal human when he's not moonstruck. But Edward is a living dead who needs blood to stay animate. That's not the kind of fate I'd wish upon my daughter, if I had one. And with no soul (if that's the case in the Twilight mythology).

[Elessar]

Bella must have Edward at any cost because he is her soulmate.

How can you be a soulmate with someone who doesn't have a soul? Or do these vamps have souls? (I haven't read or seen any Twilight)

So this Edward is a vamp, and Jacob is a werewolf, right? The best partner ought to be Jacob then. He's a normal human when he's not moonstruck. But Edward is a living dead who needs blood to stay animate. That's not the kind of fate I'd wish upon my daughter, if I had one. And with no soul (if that's the case in the Twilight mythology).

You kind of hit the nail on the head of the main point of conflict about Edward turning Bella. They never really use the term "soulmates" so the question of having a soul doesn't come up in that context, but it does come up in the sense that Bella believes Edward must have a soul (which he disagrees with), and that thus she would have a soul if she were to be turned, and therefore that vampires are not all categorically "damned". In truth it has some philosophical depth to it, it's kind of your classical question of Calvinist determinism -- is their fate sealed by virtue of what they are (a condition which in many cases was not voluntary); or, is redemption possible by moral behavior?

Basically Edward won't turn Bella because he thinks he'd be damning her... Jacob is the logical choice, but that's pretty much exactly why he's not "the" choice. Kind of the whole point of the series

(Don't forget people - this isn't any more facile a dynamic than R+J - after all, Paris was the logical choice, too).

[aadarshinah]

It's basically just a Romeo and Juliet to me. Sure, they're madly in love, but part of their love is fueled by the way that they can't ever be together. I really do think that, in a year or a century or a millenium after they went to all this trouble, they'll discover how fundamentally different they are and be unable to reconsile that passion with a long-term relationship.

[Elessar]

It's basically just a Romeo and Juliet to me. Sure, they're madly in love, but part of their love is fueled by the way that they can't ever be together. I really do think that, in a year or a century or a millenium after they went to all this trouble, they'll discover how fundamentally different they are and be unable to reconsile that passion with a long-term relationship.

It just depends on whether your perception of 'relationship' is one founded on a pragmatic focus on all those bread-and-butter "what makes two people get along" traits like common interests, compatible personalities, comparable life experiences, etc; or, whether your perception of relationship allows for superimposition of such as thing the whole 'star-crossed-love-at-first-sight/opposites-attract/irrational-need' over and incorporation with, those more tangible qualities of a relationship that dog many of us day-to-day.

I've always personally believed that the first kind of a relationship is based on the realities you have to live with when you force a love to fit into the person you are, whereas the second describes a love that transforms who you are. The realities change.

A lot of us believe Trip and T'Pol have something that runs deep, something that exists under and in support of those personalities that make them who they are - not something that has to sit on top and therefore needs some measure of practical compatibility in their surface traits as people to remain tenable. It lays at the foundation, deeper and more resilient than any other part of that which makes each of them who they are. The question is, basically, whether a person believes love to be transformative, or adaptive. Do you change it to fit you or does it change you to fit it?

[justTripn]

it's kind of your classical question of Calvinist determinism -- is their fate sealed by virtue of what they are (a condition which in many cases was not voluntary); or, is redemption possible by moral behavior?

Ok, I take it back when I said you can't draw any lessons from this movie, lol . . .

Along that line, I would say that the movie seems to be saying that Bella is an odd type of person. Right or wrong she is somehow cosmically connected to Edward and the vampires. She feels that she IS a certain way (vampire-like? Edward's soulmate) and their is nothing that can be done about that. So deciding to be with Edward is not really moral or immoral, it is amoral. It just HAS to be. (It's a condition which is not voluntary).

Hmmm . . . translated to the real world, maybe there are parallel dilemmas--do you do what you SHOULD do according to some rational moral calculation that everyone else can see, or do you do what it feels like you HAVE to do or else you would kill yourself? This is maybe the dilemma of someone who feels they were born the wrong gender and decides to cross dress or change their sex. Or Governor Sanford who got up one day and flew off to South America to see his mistress without telling anyone where he was going. Is it crazy or is it one of those things that just IS. The person had to do it for the sake of their own sanity? Obviously there is no way to know from the outside.

As for a hundred years or a millenium from now, whether Bella and Edward will still be in love? So what? The story doesn't go on that long. We aren't supposed to worry about that.

[justTripn]

The feeling that there is "one soulmate" out there for you, the only person you can truely love, not a range of possible compatible matches, is a probably illusion. But the "one main love" seems to be the premise of the movie, and its a GREAT MOVIE!

[Elessar]

As for a hundred years or a millenium from now, whether Bella and Edward will still be in love? So what? The story doesn't go on that long. We aren't supposed to worry about that.

I always liked the idea of a fanfic that takes place some indeterminate amount of time in the future, say 75,000 years, in which we're not told a whole lot of background info but that basically someone wanders upon Bella and Edward's cottage and that maybe there's no sign of civilization anywhere nearby. I was thinking either a post-apocalyptic world or a post-technological, post-historical world where Edward and Bella are, perhaps, the last of their kind... and so that might be an interesting framework within which to work with the question of whether their love would survive.

I liked it when the two Romanian vampires talked about how at one time they both sat there on their throne and didn't move for like 500 years or something crazy like that.