Twilight: Prelude to a Rant Redux: All Hail Cleolinda!

I am not Cleolinda, the undisputed Empress of All Twilightology. If there is any true literary genius to be found in the whole remarkable culturuption, my moments of Alician clairvoyance were of the available at Walmart beyond obvious variety, like the inevitable Cathy and Heathcliff sighings and sightings, even Meyer herself will have found it impossible not to reflect on the sheltered, isolated and innocent damsel telling a story at once "organic" and diametrically opposed to the standard platitude hurled at writers to "write what they know."

In an interview with the dude who plays a vampire in the movies, Rob2daP makes some comments that suggest that either Meyer's fantasy did have an element that might have been a little too far down a road he so didn't wanna go, or this was simply the story she had in her, she was simply where this story had been plopped, and it is hard to imagine any other way that a nice devout Mormon mom would be able to get away with writing some of the saga's more "graphic" scenes, even when coached in the safe and OK context of Holy Maternity.

It is interesting to imagine what she might have written, what this very story might have been, had she herself been a product of a different culture, had had a different set of life experiences.

For example, we know she has some familiarity with the Bronte sisters, but under different circumstances, might one of the characters been named Lena?

Such unanswered questions aside, parents and grandparents of the more serious and "conservative" fans must find themselves shaking their heads at just how far we've come since the days when that nice Charles Ingalls was a cute Teenage Werewolf, though if they were a little older they would not be as horrified as Cleolinda that Edward the Frosted orders his little fool to lie still. Or does that thought smack of age-ism? Whoever did Pattinson's makeup was no stranger to Valentino's breakout role.

Now that I have read all 4 Cantos of Meyer's swan song, and am thus up-to-date on the State of Pop Culture, it is unlikely that I will be able to resist the temptation to continue holding forth on the subject, despite having freely acknowledged that nothing that I could possibly say would be anywhere near as entertaining or genius as Jones the storysucker, who once she got her teeth into Meyer's tale, began to feed hard, and we are all the richer for it. We are fortunate that she has not yet been able to stop.