The Antisocial Socialist

But, uh.

I'm going to recommend fanfic. Twilight fanfic.

If it helps, I will add that it's a critique in story form—a remix of Twilight by someone who is clearly quite smart. The premise is that Bella is thoughtful and self-aware. The other characters are recognizably themselves up to a certain point, after which the story takes strange and unpredictable twists as Bella—re-imagined as intelligent, logical, and rather feminist, if flawed—turns the vampire-and-werewolf established order on its head. Along the way, it deconstructs both the failures of SMeyer's worldbuilding, the racist, sexist, and heteronormative narrative of the original books, and the problematic power imbalances of paranormal romance as a genre.

It didn't immediately grip me, as the author—intentionally, I assume—doesn't deviate much from SMeyer's rather flat, prosaic style, but the more I read, the more I couldn't stop reading. It's clever, nuanced, and an excellent read for a day when the weather's hovering around -16°C, not including windchill.

Luminosity can be found here. There's a sequel, which I'm afraid to dive into lest it suck up all of my time.

You guys! I just saw the new sparkly vampire movie. I didn't pay to see it, of course—that's what the internet is for. It's really awful. It's better than the first one because it has a werewolf versus vampire fight, though it's a kind of pathetic werewolf versus vampire fight, and also nothing blows up and the only people who die are people of colour (of course).

( spoilers under here )

There you go, LJ. I just saved you two hours and the price of admission. You can repay me by telling me why the vampires need to go to high school.