gisellelx

[gisellelx]

Carlisle, is that you?

[gisellelx]

hah. Somebody just liked this which forced me to revisit it. It is 2025, the tenure book is published, the full book is published and I’m up to my eyeballs in a giant grant about AI that is on T*d Cr*z’s shitlist…

… but this book is still on the back burner. It’s tentatively titled Team Edward: The Most Hated Series That Actually Changed Everything.

Doing a little reading for an article I’m working on, of Jenkins (1992) Textual Poachers, one of the more influential works about fans and fandom. Jenkins identifies 10 principal forms which fan rewriting takes: 

1. Recontextualization = fill in the blanks, missing scenes, etc.  2. Expanding the series timeline = prequels and post timeline AUs 3. Refocalization = shifting attention away from the programs’ central figures onto secondary characters (can be a subversive way to reclaim minority and female characters) 4. moral realignment = invert or question the moral universe of the principal text 5. genre shifting = changing the genre of the source, for example, focusing on a romance rather than action 6. cross overs = cross overs 7. character dislocation = characters removed from their original situations and given alternative names and identitites 8. personalization = mary sueing (which Jenkins identifies as generally being not well-received) 9. emotional intensification = H/C and angst 10. eroticization = explorations of the erotic dimensions of characters’ lives 

What’s really interesting about Twilight fanfic is that it really only consisted of character dislocation, emotional intensification, and eroticization. (It also is amusing to me personally that I primarily write 1, 2, and 3, with some 9 thrown in. This explains a great many things.) That so few of the fics, especially the popular ones, in any way dealt with the actual world and canon is fascinating. Secondarily fascinating is the almost complete absence of generic shifting. I recall a question on the 2010 Comic Con panel about whether or not fanfiction was its own genre, and whether or not Twilight fanfiction was its own genre. I think I answered something that minisinoo had made me think about, about the connections between fanfiction and things like historical fiction. But actually, the really interesting thing about Twilight fanfiction was that it was so generically consistent. The women writing and reading Twific are a classic erotic romance writing and reading audience. This is why there was such wank when an amateur Twific author would try to “do something different” and “not be like all those other fics” and smash the conventions of genre romance, usually by killing the Edward cipher or the Bella cipher at the end of the fic. It was less about the character death than it was the breaking of VERY firm genre romance conventions. Genre romance is among the hardest genres to write precisely because the expectations of the readers are so stringent–boy meets girl, boy and girl encounter conflict, boy and girl make up, and often boy marries girl. The thing is, all these fics are bound by the same conventions of genre romance, and, to some extent now, by the conventions of BDSM romance. AND to add to the complexity, those conventions were solidified and partially re-written by MoTU, and have now ironically been reimposed on The Office/Bastard, The Submissive, (Edward) Wallbanger, and the like as they have been edited for professional release. What is fascinating about Twific is not that it was subversive. What is fascinating is that, due to the nature of the fans of Twilight, it was so utterly *not* subversive. It did not subvert genre conventions, audience expectations, or even the central premises of the source text. This is also why the shift to P2P worked so well–these weren’t re-imaginings of Twilight with any new insights offered by fanfic writers. They were simply retellings of the exact same story, and the one which stayed the closest to the original did the best–the best retelling did the best reselling.  There’s a book in all this somewhere, someday after 2018 when the manuscript of my tenure book is finished… 

[gisellelx]

in case it is useful:

Hey tiny edward, have you ever heard Carlisle or Esme swear?

he's a terrible influence

[gisellelx]

Hey tiny edward, have you ever heard Carlisle or Esme swear?

he's a terrible influence

[gisellelx]

Anybody else got like,, rlly random connections to famous ppl?? Like my older brothers were friends w Jennifer Lawrence when they were like 12 and I just found out I’m friends w the cousin of the girl who voiced honey lemon in big hero six like, idk what I’m supposed to do with either of these tid bits I feel like I was supposed to live my life in ignorance of them

[gisellelx]

quick eddie cullen doodle from today - i honestly didn’t look at movie edward but it still ended up resembling him

[gisellelx]

A timely question as the U.S. Supreme Court wraps up their term today—any plans/WIPs to add to Ordinary Time?

Yes! I think there are a couple cases they might want to weigh in on here, to say nothing of the election itself. OT sticks pretty closely to ones that directly affect their family, but I think there's some room here for a few questions:

What does the LGBTQ+ opt-out schooling thing mean for Renesmee if she decides to have kids (this hinges on me deciding how I feel about that...biology is not on her side even if SM wants it to be)?

As doctors and cismen, how do they feel about the Tennessee ban on gender affirming care for kids? I can see them having different opinions here, with Carlisle being more progressive due to his longer view which is more informed by the practice of medicine, and Edward being more myopic and chauvinistic about it.

That said, the two things I am actively working on in Kairos right now are OT chapter 7, which is about Dobbs (Renesmee, who is training to be a fetal surgeon, is not fan, to put it mildly), and then a side project that popped into my head about a year ago, which is an 8-chapter novella called Pride Month. It's about the boys' move from New York to San Jose in 2021, and bridges chapter 6, the last chapter in New York, and chapter 7, the first chapter in California. I think the full summary will read: "Edward forces Carlisle to take a road trip." I wanted to have it posting this month, given its title, but it's going to be a little while longer! but I'll pop a tiny bit from chapter 1 under the cut.

The bedclothes were among the last things still to be packed; everything else was in boxes. The artwork. The televisions. The expansive wardrobes that Alice still insisted on buying them, one over-priced box of couture at a time. The piles and piles of scrubs which were what both of them preferred wearing anyway. Carlisle, at “forty-two,” had been at Mt. Sinai for almost a decade. It was easier, they had learned, to pass now—people’s stereotypes about gay men enabled them to fly under a different radar. Carlisle’s perfect complexion? The result of a meticulous skincare routine. The golden hair without a fleck of gray? The work of his talented colorist. Even his ability to avoid developing the dreaded “dad bod” made sense: that a man who’d chosen Edward as his partner would take pains to stay as dashingly slim as he had been at twenty-three went without saying. It had meant more stability, and a longer time for them both, and this privilege, which had been rare throughout their lifetime together: the ability to move on their own time, and for their own reason.

The reason had called last night, at the end of her shift, one o’clock in the morning New York time. She still hated the phone; her preference being to touch her grandfather’s face and let her father see what was running through both their minds as she had done since her birth. But in the absence of physical closeness, Rene still liked to catch them up on her life as often as possible, and she’d chatted on for twenty minutes about her shift. The baby that had come off the ventilator. The mother who labored for 40 hours but had a successful VBAC. The fetal band surgery Rene had assisted on, and what if she did a fellowship in fetal surgery after she passed her boards? And yes, Granddad, the studying was going just fine, she did not need his help.

Then the conversation had turned to their impending departure. They had shipped her some of her belongings, but a great deal would be traveling on the truck to the house they’d found in the middle of nowhere in the Yosemite valley. Carlisle would work a seven-on, fourteen-off schedule, and so there was also a luxury apartment in San Jose. They would be in the same time zone again, and it would be easy to send one of the jets to retrieve her. The truck would take its time on its journey, and so would they.

“Why are you road-tripping, again? When you don’t need to sleep?”

Carlisle only laughed. “Ask your father. I have absolutely no idea.”

“Nearly four hundred years of life experience and this man still can’t grasp the concept of a vacation,” Edward deadpanned.

[gisellelx]

I know technically in canon it could be written off as Bella and Edward just not noticing, but I feel like Rosalie should have been way more conflicted about asking Carlisle to change Emmett

Miss “I wish someone had been there to vote no for me” who was changed to stop her from dying should have felt some type of way for not giving Emmett what she herself wanted. And it could have been great characterization!

On the one hand she’s mad at Carlisle for what he did but at the same time when put in the same position she knows she did the exact same thing. And she’d be so upset with herself that she allowed emotion to get to her in that moment when she prides herself on being rational.

Maybe she even pushes to keep Bella human to in a way repay the debt of making Emmett a vampire. It’s just crazy that it’s part of the plot that she saved Emmett and asked Carlisle to change him while also saying she wished she had died rather than be turned into a vampire and the two just never meaningfully connect in canon? Edward should have looked at Rosalie and Emmett and seen himself and Bella, seen Emmett blissfully fine with everything while Rosalie is never able to fully let go of the guilt both that she turned him but also that part of her thinks she should have let the man she loves die

I feel like it’s just sort of hand waved with “eh Emmett likes being a vampire so it all worked out” but I say Rosalie should have had some deep and lasting conflict over this. Should have told Edward that she understands the impulse to change someone you have feelings for but that you will then spend eternity knowing that every life they take and every moment of hurt they have is because you did this to them

And yeah there may have been a line or two in the books about it but I mean it should have been as much of the conversation as her own turning

[gisellelx]

Edward's Travel Journal 2: Ithaca, NY

if you say something enough times maybe it'll start being true

[gisellelx]

fanfic writers what font do you write in

i know on ao3 it's all in verdana but when you're drafting the fic in word or docs or whatever

[gisellelx]

comic adaptation of midnight sun p. 247-8

image descriptions in the alt text

[gisellelx]

Carlisle and Edward father and son bonding time?

they've been getting into trains

[gisellelx]

After watching Sinners, I thought about how different Twilight would’ve been if the vampires needed permission to enter and couldn’t come out in the sunlight. Edward wouldn’t be able to watch Bella sleep and no school for the Cullens. Carlisle could still work the night shift and it might actually help keep a low profile and stay around longer.

[gisellelx]

One of the weirdest aspects of getting deep into Carlisle's character both for my own writing and headcanons and for the ole' sideblog is that I keep on top of MLB because I want to make it believable that he really likes it. And as a result, I kinda have grown to like baseball a disproportionate amount? And have opinions and stuff about a sport that in the grand scheme of things, I don't care about?

It's very strange to me.

[gisellelx]

If Bella was “born to be a vampire” (blessed) then Edward was “born to be a vampire” (cursed)

Even if that kid managed to survive the Spanish influenza, you know his tragic ass would have shipped off to fight the Great War months later only to be chomped on by some other vampire in Europe

[gisellelx]

what a beautiful day to not be in high school

[gisellelx]

As I continue to play with this, though, how funny/sad would it be if the reason Carlisle didn’t warn Edward in BD was that he’d looked at his own ejaculate, found he was shooting blanks, and assumed that was because he was a vampire? And was too assured of his knowledge/considered it too impertinent to ever ask Edward?

And then Bella gets pregnant and it’s not only “That can happen?” from a hybrid point of view but also Carlisle having this soul-crushing realization that no, other male vampires are perfectly capable of conceiving children; the infertility thing is just him.

On Fanon

Fanon is a fascinating thing; where multiple people independently land on the same headcanons that have no evidence in canon. It suggests something that seems to be intrinsically true of a particular character situation.

Rereading some of my only saved AH Twilight fics (I don’t read AH as a matter of course; just not my thing) and I’m struck by shared Carlisle fanon that he’s infertile. There are exceptions sure, but a not insignificant number of writers have written him as being unable to father his own children. That there is something so intrinsic to his character that he has chosen the role of father, and that even writing him out of the canon world, the aspect of him adopting his children is so core to his being that a separate mechanism has to exist to force that on him.

There’s no specific evidence to support that in canon, but the fanon says something powerful about how people are reading the same character in the same way.