This is a transcript of Episode 158 – Midnight Sun. These transcripts are a work in progress. If you have any questions or suggestions about the formatting, please let us know! If you have a request for what transcripts you’d like to see next, you can email us at worstbestsellers@gmail.com. Please keep in mind that while we are working to make the show as accessible as possible by adding these transcripts, there are only three of us and we all have full time jobs, so it’s slow going. Thanks!
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You can listen to this episode here.
[intro music]
Kait:
Hello and welcome to the Worst Bestsellers. Where we read about Edward Cullen’s thoughts so you don’t have to. I’m Kait–
Renata:
–and I’m Renata.
Kait:
And for this episode, we read Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer. Joining us to discuss this third version of Twilight is an accidental vampire postmodernist, Carrie.
Carrie:
Hello.
Renata:
Welcome back. Carrie’s been with us since– okay, our history with Twilight in this podcast runs so deep. It was literally our first episode. Carrie was our first ever guest. And then every year we would read the next book in the saga on our anniversary episode, which this is our fifth anniversary. We’ve been doing this podcast for five calendar years.
Kait:
Is..Isn’t it our sixth?
Renata:
Kait…yes. [loud laughter]
Carrie:
Yeah, it was 2014. [Kait cracking up in the background]
Renata:
I haven’t even started drinking yet. I was just like…
Kait:
And I have.
Renata:
It’s been a while. And then, of course, 2020 has really been like five years. So I think we’re going on year 11 of the podcast.
Kait:
It’s true. Yeah. Cause we did– so for our first three anniversaries, we did the other three Twilight books. Then for our fourth anniversary, a wonderful friend of the podcast, Danielle, dm-ed a Twilight DnD game for us. [Renata: Yes.] And then for last year, we read The Host, and when we did The Host last year we said, “Put on your secret boards that Stephenie– your vision boards, that Stephenie Meyer will release….another Twilight book for our next anniversary. And I think we made Midnight Sun happen with The Secret, guys.
Renata:
We– and even the timing of it. It came out like a month before we needed it to. Like it gave us time to get it and read it and like comfortably record it. Just like, “Thank you, Stephenie,” but also, “No thank you, Stephenie.” [Kait laughs loudly]
Carrie:
Okay. This has literally made the last month of my life both bearable and unbearable.
Renata:
Exactly– like for– I…The summer leading up I was so excited. Like I preordered my copy from the bookstore and I was excited to go pick it up — from curbside pick up, safely, safely– but, you know, to have this sort of like defining moment happen in this time when like every day bleeds together, it’s like, “Okay. But August 4th Midnight Sun comes out. And that will be something different.” And then…and then I had to read Midnight Sun though. And I had to read it [Carrie and Kait laugh] so we can play our drinking game, which, um…before we get too distracted we should go over the rules of that. This is something we’ve played over our other anniversary episodes where we just made a little drinking game based on maybe some of our verbal tics or things that we say a lot in the podcast. And it’s also in some ways like a little time capsule cause some of the things on the list we don’t actually do that much anymore. So we’ve evolved.
Kait:
Yeah. I was gonna say some of it is a little outdated. We did make an update for it in 2017. Um, I think we could probably make another update for it now, but we didn’t do it before we started…so for 2021. [Renata: Yeah.]
Renata:
Um, so the rules are we’ll take a drink every time we…say something that might jeopardize our relationship with our valued sponsor, ChristianMingle.com, which right away is outdated because now we’re, of course, sponsored by Steaks and Cakes the restaurant from Christian Mingle the movie. [abruptly] This podcast has gone so…so [Kait cracks up] the journey that I need to explain Steaks and Cakes. And so I’m not going to. That’s the rule: Drink if we offend Christian Mingle. [Renata laughs]
Kait:
Uh, drink if we angrily defend something even if we don’t like it that much.
Renata:
Drink if we favorably compare a character to Christian Grey.
Kait:
Drink if we apply lessons from self-help books.
Renata:
That we do a lot. Uh, drink if we reference any other book we’ve previously read.
Kait:
Hand-in-hand with self-help books cause we’ve already mentioned The Secret once so far. Uh, drink if we resent a character’s mansplaining.
Renata:
‘Kay, we are gonna get so drunk, um, from Midnight Sun. Drink if we promote a movie or TV show over a book.
Kait:
Drink if we suggest specific ways to make the book better. [Renata: Mm-hmm.]
Renata:
Drink anytime anyone endorses fan fiction as being better than the book.
Kait:
Drink if Renata references something she heard on a podcast other than this one.
Renata:
Drink if Kait says, “This was a book.”
Kait:
Drink if we say “literally”.
Renata:
Drink if we call something “garbage”.
Kait:
Drink if Duarte interrupts.
Renata:
Drink if our guest thinks the book is much worse than Kait and Renata did because our standards have been drastically altered by this podcast. I’m not sure that one will come into play here to be honest. [Kait: Yes.]
Carrie:
It rarely does.
Kait:
So the…for the new rules that we added. Drink if we make a musical theater reference.
Renata:
These are– these are not Dua Lipa’s “New Rules,” these are our new rules. [Carrie and Kait laugh] Um, drink for Steaks N’ Cakes.
Kait:
Drink if we say, “The movie was better.”
Renata:
[quietly] That’s kind of the same. Um, whatever. Drink if a woman describes her own body in the mirror.
Kait:
Drink for uncomfortable, written-out dialect.
Renata:
Drink if we frantically have to google something mid-show. [quietly] That’ll happen.
Kait:
And drink if someone starts laughing during a dramatic reading. [Renata: Yes]
Renata:
And that whole list is on our website if you want to play along or just…read the list or…whatever. Uhhh, do, do drink responsibly, do hydrate, pace yourselves. There’s going to be a lot of mansplaining to drink over. [Carrie laughs]
Kait:
Yesssss. Ummm, but yeah. Now, now, here…here we are at Midnight Sun.
Renata:
Um. Also, I should say– and I guess I’ll probably post pictures on social media. We all made a big point of getting pomegranate cocktails because, of course, Midnight Sun has a big gross-looking pomegranate on the cover. But, of course, this is an audio medium so I could tell you I was drinking pomegranate and you wouldn’t fucking know. But I am.
Kait:
What– so what are you guys drinking?
Renata:
I’m drinking a pomegranate mimosa. [Kait: Excellent.]
Carrie:
I whipped up a drink that was pomegranate juice and ginger beer and vodka. I did not re-look up what it was called or what the proportions were–
Renata:
It’s called the Midnight Sun.
Carrie:
— so I’ve just been…okay. But also– I have also got a prosecco because at some point this is going to turn into a, um, pomegranate mimosa. [Kait: Hell ya.]
Kait:
I for the past few drinking games have been drinking French 75s. So I altered the recipe and I made a pomegranate simple syrup and cut out the lemon juice and just did a splash of pomegranate juice instead and I’m calling it a Forks 75. [Carrie: Whooooh! Renata: Ohhh, I love it.] Which I came up with last night and I was soooo proud of myself.
Renata:
Yeah, you should be. That’s very good. Um, also again, I do have– but you know what? I should stop making assumptions, cause like when we did our last X-Files episode, I was like, “I assume anyone listening has already seen the X-Files like knows what we’re talking about. And then I got some tweets that were like, “What’s ’10-13′?”. And I was like, “Oh, people were listening even if they weren’t obsessed with The X-Files. That’s weird.” So maybe you’re listening and you don’t know Twilight…or you haven’t listened to our other 700 episodes about Twilight. So Midnight Sun is sort of like…fabled Twilight lore because back in the peak of Twilight, heyday of like 2008, 2009, 2010, it was rumored Stephenie Meyer was writing Midnight Sun, which is the events of the first Twilight book from Edward’s point of view. And then someone hacked her computer or something and released a PDF of the first, it was like the first 100 pages or something of Midnight Sun of a draft, and she was so hurt and so offended by this that she said, “Like, you know what? I feel so violated I’m never going to finish Midnight Sun. And it’s never gonna come out and you…you, Hacker, have ruined Midnight Sun for everyone.” And that was sort of– and so that PDF was floating around the internet for years. I did read the PDF or at least skimmed it. Even back before the podcast, um, I haven’t looked to see if it’s out there now, I’m sure they’ve been a little bit more vigilant about scrubbing it since the actual book has come out, um, but then so earlier– Early on into quarantine, Stephenie Meyer just sort of put up this surprise counter on her website and there was this [–] area of like, “What is she counting down to?” And then she announced, like, “You know, I just feel like now is the time when I can release Midnight Sun. And I just want to put it out into the world.” And…and I think we, again, as Kait said, the real reason was because of The Secret, because of all of her vision boards. So do take a drink and do, do– Let’s cheers to The Secret and its powers.
Kait:
Hell yeah. I mean I do– obviously, this book I was miserable listening to all [strained emphasis] 25 hours of it [Carrie: Wow.] but, much like, uh…you know what? I do appreciate that Stephenie Meyer is taking the time to make everyone’s quarantine a little bit better by dusting this off. Um, much like Taylor Swift releasing Folklore and all the other art that has come out to sustain us through these months. Hamilton being released on–
Renata:
Disney. Disney Plus. Yeah, and by the way, drink for Hamilton.
Kait:
Disney Plus.
Renata:
And, um, you know– and I know a lot of people were being sort of cynical about it and be like, “Oh, it’s a cash grab.” And maybe I just am too optimistic, but I really don’t think Stephenie Meyer needs any more money. And I really do [Carrie laughs] sincerely feel like Stephenie Meyer was like, “I’m gonna do people a solid and it’s quarantine and I’m just gonna do it.” And I-I do feel like, like a) is she gonna make a ton of money from this? Yes, obviously, but I really do feel like her intentions were…pure.
Kait:
Yeah, that was honestly like my first thought was like, “Well, you know, everyone’s…cause-cause it was announced too, at that time when like everyone was kind of building up like different things and announcing different things that were gonna happen in the beginning when everyone was like “We need to fill quarantine with all sorts of like ‘Alternate’ social events,” and now that’s kinda calmed down and everyone is kinda like, “Well, you know what? Like…I can– I can– I don’t have to do some online social event every night of the week. [Renata: Mm-hmm] But it did– it did feel like it was in the spirit of all of those other like quarantine time announcements.
Renata:
Um, here’s another musical theater reference to drink to. Like, in the beginning, Andrew Lloyd Webber was putting up free-streaming musicals every week, and then he was like, “Sorry. I ran out of musicals and I didn’t think quarantine would last this long. By-yee.” [Carrie and Kait crack up] And by the way, Andrew Lloyd Webber posted the WAP challenge on his TikTok, and I saw that and I read that sentence and my brain exploded. [Kait laughs]
Carrie:
I’m sorry, the “W-O-K”?
Renata:
No. “W-A-P”. Wet ass pussy– [Carrie: oh…OH.] –which Bella has also. And I guess so does Andrew Lloyd Webber…turns out.
Carrie:
Wooowww.
Kait:
Okay. Less funny than that, I was just gonna say Dave Malloy released a pro-shot of Ghost Quartet that I’ve watched three times during quarantine. Thank you Dave Malloy, once again, for sustaining me and giving me life.
Renata:
And drink for Dave Malloy. [Kait: Always.] God, I might have to go refill this drink soon.
Carrie:
Okay. H-here’s where I am…I was fascinated with everything about this book, except actually reading it…and which is why I believe Stephenie Meyer has turned me into a postmodernist. [Renata laughs] Because what– what I am doing, is finding myself going, “This is a fandom that I picked up seven years ago as a goof.” And yet it keeps giving me more…fascinating new textural extras. Like, I’m much more interested in this than I’m– I was interested in like the Harry Potter play or whatever, you know? It’s just like– I-I mean it’s weird, yes, I’m going to keep doing and redoing the same text. And most– instead of just putting out a short story collection, putting out a sequel, putting out literally anything else, it’s just kind of revisiting and revisiting this same text and it–
Kait:
My friend, Beth– oh, go on.
Carrie:
–I was just going to say it just had me actually going back to, cause as-as I read some of these I was like going back to the original Twilight and say, “Okay. Hey. This is what’s different about this text and this is what worked about it. Is this good? Is this actually good? [Renata laughs] And I just wanna to– I don’t know if we have to drink if I reference another podcast. [Renata: Yeah. Of course. Go for it.] Okay. Drank. So one of my favorite podcasts right now is a movie podcast called Blank Check, but they actually started out as a Star Wars podcast. And what they did for like their first 10 episodes was just rewatch The Phantom Menace and like pretend that no other Star Wars movie existed, and try to figure out what was going on. I wouldn’t say it’s great podcasting, it’s a little weird, and they’ve kinda come around and been a more kind of like serious critical podcast since then, and– but what they said is, “The reason we kept doing this was because we know The Phantom Menace is not a good movie, but every single time we go back and be like, “But maybe it is a good movie” and not just a weird cultural artifact that I’m obsessed with. And I was like– I’ve always been like, “That’s a very strange exercise.” And then as I found myself reading the third rewrite of the Twilight Books, I’m like, “Shit. I do know that feeling.” So…I dunno.
Renata:
Oh, by the way, we multiple times have referred to this as being “the third one” and in case you missed this, we didn’t do it on an anniversary, we did it as sort of a surprise episode because Stephenie Meyer did kind of a surprise drop of Twilight: Life and Death which is a gender-swapped version of Twilight. And so that wasn’t released as a September anniversary episode. It came out kind of randomly as the book did. And that was where Beau was a human boy, and Edythe was a girl vampire and they fell in love. So this is, yeah, the third version. By the way, also drink for me googling mid-episode because…I..I-feel like after Midnight Sun she also announced that she was also making separately a sequel that would come out. And so we’ll have to find that announcement. [Kait: Mm-hmm] And then while I was googling, there’s a notice and Stephenie Meyer’s website that says, “Bad news. I’ve been exposed to COVID.” [Carrie: OH NO.] And…I– it didn’t say she had it, it said she had been exposed to it. So she canceled an event that she had planned to do. Um…
Kait:
[whispering harshly] Stephenie, don’t do events. It’s the PANDEMIC time.
Renata:
Well, it wasn’t a real event, it was something like she was– they put Twilight back into drive-ins and she was going to record a thing or something–
Kait:
Oooh. Okay.
Renata:
–to go in the drive-in, but even to go like she canceled going to do that. I guess.
Kait:
Okay. All right. Fine, Stephenie, I’m sorry.
Renata:
She’s not doing real events. I don’t think she really has COVID, but she canceled going to do the thing because of potentially spreading COVID. So good for you. That’s responsible, Stephenie. Thank you.
Kait:
Um, so my-my friend, Beth, tweeted when Midnight Sun came out. “You only write the first– you only write the same book three times once.” [Renata: Yup.] [laughter] Which was– I was so charmed by it I think I retweeted it on the—the Worst Best Sellers twitter as well, but like, it is—it just, the absurdity of it. Like I can’t even, like…I saw a lot of people when it was first announced, kinda disparaging it, um, as a money grab. But as I said, like I– that hadn’t been my first impression so I was kinda like, “Oh, it’s weird that people would think this. But also like…Fucking, get it, girl. Like, do it.” If people are going to fucking buy the third version of this book that you wrote, why not write the third version and put it out there? Go for it.
Renata:
Yeah. And I’m much– cause we also did read The Host and we also read The Chemist, her other adult book, and–
Kait:
[draws in breath] I forgot about The Chemist.
Renata:
–everyone did. And that’s why she has to go back and [Kait laughs] that’s why she has to keep going back to Twilight, cause this is the only thing that’s good. Um, she did have an interview. And it was a charming interview and it was great because they asked what she was reading and she named like Justina Ireland and she gave a really big boost to some like….less well-known authors and authors of color. And like, again, Stephenie Meyer overall, we’ve talked about this before, like she does try to use her platform to like boost other people and especially other women and that’s cool. Um, okay. Here’s– I-I do feel like there was something else that she said, but this said, um, it’s a quote from Stephenie Meyer saying, “There are two more books I think in the world that I want to write, meaning the world of Twilight, um, “I’ve got them outlined and a chapter written of the first one so I know it’s there. I’m not ready to do that right now. I want to do something brand new.” Whatever. But she…now…somewhere else I think one of them was like a sequel and one of them was something else. And–
Kait:
Yeah, I remember Googling it because I was like this has got to be fake. And it wasn’t. [Renata laughs]
Carrie:
Is one of them the Jasper civil war…
Renata:
Neither of them was, but let’s keep that on our vision boards. Cause that’s what we want.
Kait:
So before we go any further and get into this, we’re going to get into kinda the differences, and probably Carrie and Renata are gonna remind me of things that were in Twilight cause I don’t remember cause I read it once, six years ago…but…clearly, like, this has been a cultural touchstone, especially cause it happened during quar. So this isn’t the only Midnight Sun episode we’re going to do. Um, we’re gonna try and keep this to like our regular episode time. I know usually, we let the Twilight ones go over. Uh, and if there’s anything we didn’t cover, any questions you have, anything you’re like dying to know about Midnight Sun that we didn’t mention in this podcast, hit us up. Email, Twitter, all the places. We don’t, I don’t think, check Facebook super often. We have a discord now that we’ll mention at the end but you can get there on our website. And let us know what your questions about Midnight Sun are, and we’re gonna do a follow-up. So if we don’t get to everything in this episode, hopefully, we’ll get to it..uh…going forward from here.
Renata:
Yes. Two things I want to say. I do check the Facebook, but when you have a page on Facebook it hides all the messages in this like weird folder that’s really hard to access. It’s a problem. Fix it, Facebook. Um, but anyway, as Kait said that’s not the best place to reach us. Second of all, I do want to recap a conversation that Kait and I had about figuring out what to do with this episode and being like, “Oh, should we do the drinking game?” And I was like, “Well, I kind of feel like a lot of people are actually really curious about Midnight Sun and I don’t want to get like super drunk and forget to say important stuff. And Kait was like, “Well, I don’t think there’s a lot of nuance in Midnight Sun that like we’re gonna need to go into.” And I was like, “Whoa No. I didn’t say there was nuance, Kait, I said, ‘People are curious about it’.”[Carrie and Kait laugh]And…
Kait:
Which is true. It was legit.
Renata:
[laughing] So, yeah. So we’re doing the best of both worlds where I’m frankly already like feeling my theater and Secret-induced sips of Mimosa. So again this is gonna fall apart any minute now. But we’ll do another sober episode where if you have actual questions regarding the extremely nuanced plotline of this 600-page vampire book, um, we’ll be back…which is a Hamilton reference and so, drink. [laughter]
[20:05]
Kait:
Um, so I obviously mentioned it just then, um, I just to kind of like vaguely recap, um…Our histories with Twilight, I mentioned this in the first Twilight episode, I’ve probably mentioned it in every one since, I did NOT listen to any of them at all recently, but when I was selling books, Eclipse had just– or was just about to come out. I was selling books through the release of Eclipse and then through Breaking Dawn, but I had never heard of the Twilight books when I started there, and some of my coworkers were very into them and insisted they were, “The best books ever. I had to read them.” And I was like, “Sure, fine.” And I read like, I dunno, 20 or 30 pages of the first Twilight and was like this is…boring. And did not read any further cause it was a giant thick book, and if I was not engaged in the first 30 pages, I did not want to force myself to read any more of it. Um…
Renata:
And then you made some different life choices.
Kait:
And then I made some different life choices. My dad, actually, um, every time I went home…
Renata:
I-I’m anxious to hear where this statement is going. [Carrie laughs, Kait: Oh…] My dad loves Twilight.
Kait:
My dad and I had…my dad and I had a fight this morning– okay, that was something different, this is not about the fight or about my dad loving Twilight, but he remembers how much I didn’t like it when I was selling books, because he was teaching middle school and, of course, the middle school kids were super into. And now, despite the fact that he knows that I have this podcast, that I’ve been doing it for six years, that he has been to a live show, everytime I mention Twilight he’s like, “I thought you didn’t like those books.” And I’m like, “Dad…”[laughs]
Carrie:
[laughing] Yes and no.
Renata:
And I– And we actually sort of talked about this recently because my Peace Corps friend, Trina, came on our Caroline B Cooney Freeze episode, I got into Twilight in the Peace Corps when the first movie came out and we all went to see it in a Dominican theater, and it was the best movie experience of my life cause we didn’t know what the fuck it was. And Dominicans just like laugh and scream at movies, like every movie is Rocky Horror Show in a Dominican theater. And I love it and I…first of all, I miss going to movies in general, second of all, I miss going to Dominican movies because I love to yell at movies and Americans don’t like it. [Carrie and Kait laugh] So that was so good, but then we got the books and I even read the first one in Spanish which is called Crepúsculo. And um, but do I like Twilight? I don’t know, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of Twilight…[laughter] [Kait: Yeah.]
Carrie:
[laughing] Yeah, sort of to recap my story and I guess why I ended up being the first guest on this. I was very much for a long time, a person who is like, “I do not read bad books. Why would I waste my time on that?” And literally, there was some kind of reading challenge on NPR to read, um, Twilight. And then I was kind of like, first of all, I was like, “Do I like this? Is this literature? Am I reading some weird girl’s blog about all the weird shit that happens to her in school? I was just–”
Renata:
She’s gone on– she’s gone on her favorite search engine and typed in “web blogging.”
Carrie:
[laughs] It’s so true! But, and yeah, so I was kind of– I was fascinated by the viewpoint of the book and like also do– I was, I think I had just seen the Runaways and I was really into Kristen Stewart at the time– [Renata: For sure.]
[Meow]
Carrie:
–and so I was just really fascinated by this sort of…viewpoint of this girl who is in this like sort of dark and wet and shitty town where everybody thinks that they know her because they know her Dad and just…I…and she’s just very self-absorbed and kinda gets knocked out of it when she sees this guy who has a mysterious thing. And…without it being a particularly well-executed version of that, I was like, but this is really relatable to what my…teenage mind felt like, even though I would have been way too snobby when I was 17 to read a book like this. [Renata: Yes.] So, um, which brings us into the fact that sometimes a story is told from a certain point of view for a reason. [Renata: Mm-hmm.] And…that totally taking this, especially the start of this book, out of…Bella’s particular feeling about being stuck in this town and just kind of finding this mystery and exploring it is kind of…and like making it be about this sort of weirdo, arrogant vampire dude who’s never noticed a girl before, um, is…it-it’s just– even when the dialogue is the same, it’s such a different…like…it’s reason to exist is completely different. [Renata: Yes] And that is just kind of– I was very, especially the opening of the book, was when I kept going back and saying…not that everything about OG Twilight works, but that this book doesn’t even understand what worked about that first part.
[25:31]
Renata:
Yes. Exactly. Because I have– keeped turning over in my head if this is like, a very smart or a very oblivious move on Stephenie’s part. [Carrie: Oblivious.] Where like, Carrie you and I were talking back and forth a while ago about how, like, yeah, in the books from Bella’s point of view she comes across as like, um, very self-absorbed. Like she does look out for her family but she doesn’t– she’s completely uninterested in her peers and we did like that for her. And then in this book, we have Edward’s point of view where he’s like, “Bella is so selfless, she’s always going out of her way to help her friends. She’s always just doing nice things for other people.” Which we never fucking see Bella do. And it’s like, is this a commentary about how like when you’re in love you see the best things in other people and like people look different from a different point of view? Or is this Stephenie Meyer forgetting that Bella is shitty? Or is this Stephenie Meyer not knowing that Bella is shitty and Stephenie Meyer thinking like, “Yeah, Bella’s always been a good friend.” When like she fucking hasn’t been and she’s constantly just thinking about how boring and dumb everyone in Forks are and how like there not worth spending her time with.
Kait:
It-it’s– I mean, it’s been a minute since I…read Twilight. Obviously, like I said I haven’t read it since we initially read it six years ago. Um, and we watched the movies at some point as a bonus episode for Patreon. And I don’t remember those either. [laughter] I’m sure they haven’t. Um, but I do– it is interesting, obviously, I feel the more like Doyle-ist perspective is that she didn’t realize that Bella is a shitty person. But also it is interesting that Edward does constantly say to Bella like, “You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re better than you think you are. Like, you don’t know how you see yourself. You see yourself in a way that’s flawed and you don’t know, like, how you look to the rest of the world.” And…mostly he’s saying that in regards to her being hot. [Renata: Uh huh. Yeah.] [laughter] But there are shades of that, like, it could be interpreted as there are shades of her just not realizing that like, you know, kinda how like when we think that like, “Oh, of course, I’m going to fucking wear a mask when I go to the grocery store,” and don’t realize or, “Of course, I’m gonna tip 20%” and don’t realize that to other people like that is a big deal and not just basic fucking human decency. [Renata: Yeah…] But–
Renata:
By the way, Edward, confirmed good tipper in this book. [Kait laughs]
Carrie:
I-I do like, I like that idea as kinda like going back and getting a new perspective, but I just think in the case of…Bella, especially in that first book, we’ve been in her head and she just does not think or care about her classmates. I think that’s very fundamental to kind of th-th-the depressive fog that she’s in, basically. So–
Renata:
Yes, like, here we specifically see, like for example, of course Bella and Edward are lab partners and we see Bella explicitly going and inviting the like class stoner who’s failing the class to come be in a group project and Edward’s like, “That’s so thoughtful of her.” And Edward reads the teacher’s mind and sees the teacher thinking, “Oh, it’s so nice of her to give this kid a chance.” That event didn’t happen in Bella’s point of view at all. So, um, so what is the truth?
Kait:
There’s also– I posted this and I do—I have greatly enjoyed the discord that we’ve created for this podcast [Carrie: Yes.] since we, we made it. But I posted something that my roommate sent me last night which is a very long Tumblr post wherein a person was like, “What if Twilight, the Twilight books, are Bella’s Gone Girl diaries?” [Renata laughs] “And she has actually figured out what vampires are and has been trying to figure out how to be turned into a vampire and finally heard about the Cullens and decided that they were her marks and created the Twilight books as like her diaries of what was going through her head during that time, when really the whole time she’s been playing a long game to be turned into a vampire.” And…it was, I love it. I love it. And that is a question I might ask in this episode. I’m definitely going to ask in the next one of everyone later, but I do– I can’t, I am tipsy enough that I can’t remember why I brought that up. [Carrie: because–]
Renata:
Well, cause we were talking about like Bella being an unreliable narrator versus Edward being an unreliable narrator.
Kait:
Yes. Yes! And I do, like obviously again, this is not at all what Stephenie Meyer was intending, but I do love the idea of her being like, “I’m gonna…how can I be the most unassuming person possible to get this bland as hell, beige wearing vampire to fall desperately in love with me.”
Renata:
Yes, also one thing that I want to talk about the narrator and not that, is of, course, Edward can read everyone’s mind except Bella’s and that was sort of the mystery throughout the saga. And then In Breaking Dawn, it’s revealed that it’s because she’s a shield and her mind is so protected that…fucking, whatever. But and then, then that’s sort of accepted and moved on. But in this one, we learn from Edward, that her dad, Charlie, has sort of cloudy thoughts and he can kinda read Charlie’s mind but not entirely. Not as much as he can read most people’s minds. And then, Bella’s mom, Renee, has very loud thoughts and so she like projects her thoughts aggressively at people all the time, which is weird. [Kait laughs] But also you would think that would cancel out and just make Bella normal, like those two traits, but, apparently, no, apparently it makes her thoughts totally silent to Edward which, um…doesn’t quite add up. You know what–
Carrie:
It’s almost like–
Renata:
I’m, I’m not a vampire doctor, so I don’t know.
Carrie:
I was gonna say, I think Carlisle I’m sure could explain that. [Renata: Yes.] I-I think just on this question of like, what, just on the very basic issue of what Stephenie Meyer intended, there’s very clearly– I haven’t compared this to like what the original, um, Midnight Sun draft looks like, but I’m speculating a lot of stuff just gets dropped into, um, the narrative for her to kind of like justify. Well, no. Bella’s not selfish here. And Edward, I’m quite sure, and I think we need to get ready to drink for comparing somebody…unfavorably-favorably to Christian Grey? Because there’s definitely these things that Stephenie has dropped in to make sure that you know that Edward is actually, would not ever be like a mean, dominant whatever. He says, um, “I have the oddest desire to wait on her hand and foot” in some socially acceptable way. To show Bella that her merely existing was more than enough. And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a different dynamic than, uh…”
Kait:
I will straight up say– so we read Gray, obviously, I’m sure everyone listening knows the 50 Shades of Gray started out as Twilight fanfiction and then was published as its own wildly popular series that gained a lot of the same, uh, terrible unwarranted criticisms that Twilight did. Not to say there aren’t incredibly warranted criticisms, but…it went through the same “this is what women are reading and thus it is bad” rigmarole that Twilight did, but, um, E.L. James did, in fact, publish Grey which is 50 Shades of Grey from Christian’s perspective, which is possibly one of the books that we’ve read for the podcast that made me most feel like I needed to take a shower after I was done with it. [Renata: Yeaaah.] It was just– Christian is…just…irredeemably the worse.
Renata:
Christian Grey is disgusting.
Kait:
And I will say that I walked away with this with a stronger opinion of Edward than I walked away from Grey with an opinion of Christian Grey.
Renata:
Yes. By the way, speaking of valid criticisms, again, before we get too drunk, I do want to say that one of the most valid criticisms of the Twilight Saga is cultural appropriation of the real Quileute tribe. And there is…there is a little bit of that in here as Edward callously reads the minds of Billy and Jacob Black. But I also want to say, because we put this on social media but not everyone sees, um, as just sort of a little something we could do, um, we donated the same amount of money that we spend on our copies of buying Midnight Sun to the Quileute tribe’s fund to move to higher ground where they’re trying to relocate one of their schools cause it’s on like a tsunami path or something. That’s not a thing. [Kait: Yeah.] It’s too close to the ocean and they need to move it further from the ocean.
Kait:
Yes, and yea-aah, aaand we, if you have also decided to train wreck read this book along with the rest of us, it is something that we would recommend that you do if you can afford it, [Renata: Yeah. These trying times.] Obviously, like these trying times and all, but if you can afford it, you know…
Renata:
Yeah. We’ll link to it. And this wasn’t our idea. I know I saw multiple people on Twitter put up the link and we were like, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” I don’t remember who started the tweets, but good job everyone who had thought and it’s a good thought.
Kait:
Yeah, and you know, just as a refresher too outside of the valid criticisms of…uh, cultural appropriation, there are valid criticisms of Twilight and, obviously, we’re about to make a whole lot of more criticisms of Twilight, but I do always think that it is a good idea to refresh, especially for new listeners who maybe…uh, you know, I feel like we haven’t necessarily had a book in a while that fell into this trap, but, you know, a lot of the criticisms that you hear around things like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey is that, you know, it’s hurting women because women don’t realize it’s fantasy and they’re gonna expect people– that it’s romantic for people to treat them this way and really it’s abusive and stalkery and gross. And if we let our teenage daughters read these books then they’re gonna grow up to be abuse victims. Which is…baaa-ad and wrong and, um, there are many, many reasons to criticize these books, and as I said, “We’re about to get into a lot of them.”
Renata:
And reasons t-to criticize the patriarchy at large.
Kait:
Ye-eees. There’s always criticisms to– for the patriarchy at large.
Renata:
Is patriarchy one of our drinking game things? Cause if not, it should be.
Kait:
It should be. I’ll take a drink for that. [Carrie: DRINK.] [Renata laughs] But yeah, you know, just as a refresher, it is great if you want to, you know, maybe perhaps as an example start a podcast where you talk about books that are BAD, but you should also try to place them in the cultural context of, “What is bad because it’s bad and what is bad because…we are grown to hate women and people of color and people with disabilities and queer people and anyone who’s different than we are.” And uh…and maybe…to keep that in mind as you are criticizing things. We are not always 100% great about that, but we do make an effort. [Renata quietly: We try.] You should as well. And now I’ll stop being preachy and let’s talk about this fucking bonkers book.
Renata:
It’s so long. And, and reading it– I didn’t fully reread Twilight, but I do have a copy of it and I would flip through because the pacing of this book is so weird that I’d be like we’re two-thirds through and we just got to baseball? I thought baseball happened sooner. And then I would go look at real Twilight and be like, “OMG, no. Baseball also happened like so– like so much of both books is just like plotless, um, just sort of thinking thoughts, going to biology class and thinking thoughts about your crush. Um…
Kait:
Edward uses his mind reading power to basically…dip into the mind of anyone who is around Bella at any point to see what she’s doing and what they’re thinking about her. And also to constantly fucking drag his siblings. [Renata: Yaaaas.]
Carrie:
W-which is like funny when it’s Emmett because it’s pretty good-natured and um, you know, Jasper and, obviously, Alice is his BFF and like that relationship is like the best part I think that’s added to the book. [Renata: Yeah.] But the stuff against Rosalie is so gross and sexist, as is how he feels about Jessica. And then he has like also this really weird jealousy thing with Mike Newton which is kind of hilarious. But it’s all such a– yeah, so I like Edward dragging his siblings psychically, but he’s so mean about Rose.
Renata:
He’s so mean and here’s what I want. I want the next book to be Twilight again but from Rosalie point of view, and I want it to be her just being like, “And then it was time for me to focus my like most shallow, surface level thoughts to keep my fucking unethical, mind-reader brother from like reading what I’m actually thinking. So I’m just gonna keep thinking about my hair until he leaves me the fuck alone.” And I-I don’t think that’s what Stephenie Meyer intends, but it’s what I want.
Kait:
Yeah, I– this was a question that I was gonna ask later, but I’ll ask it now, which is basically like if you were going to write Twilight: the same book for the fourth time, what would your version be in a perfect world? Mine would actually be, um, the one were, obviously, Bella is queer and falls in love with Alice instead. Uh, a constant refrain that Alice gives during this book [Carrie: Yes.] is that so, um– as Edward continues with Bella, like a lot of the book is his struggle between like, “Oh, I’m so drawn to her. I care about her so much and I don’t know why. But like also I need to stay away from her, like, her blood is so enticing to me and she deserves to live a human life.” And Alice keeps being like, “Oh my God, like I had a vision that you and her were gonna get together and I’m going to become her best friend and I’m gonna love her so much.” And like, the first half of the book is Alice CONSTANTLY saying to Edward, “When can I meet Bella? Is it time for me to meet Bella yet? I really need to meet Bella.” And–
Renata:
And Stephenie Meyer–
Kait:
–and I’m gonna love Bella so much.
Renata:
Stephenie Meyer does the thing that I think people of maybe an older generation do where they refer to like straight female friends as “girlfriends”. Like, “I’m gonna go to the mall with my girlfriends.” Um, which like my mom does too, um, but it just is out of context when you’re already like, “Alice loves her. She’s her girlfriend. They’re girlfriends. They’re gonna be best girlfriends.” Like, okay, this is gay. [laughter]
Kait:
Yeah. It is very– there’s a point where…um, Edward– so, Edward has been, over the course of the book…We’re telling this totally out of order, I’m so sorry to anyone– [Renata: No.] –who maybe came– [Renata: No!] –into this– [Renata: Kait!] –for some coherence–
Renata:
Kait, don’t apologize. If they wanted to know what happens in Twilight, there’s “other” podcasts. [laughter]
Kait:
[laughing] There’s also three versions of Twilight they can read [cracks up] I guess.
Renata:
Yeah, there’s also the book–
Kait:
And probably–
Renata:
–and they can watch the movie. It’s on Hulu now.
Kait:
–three separate Wikipedia entries. Um, but, so…Alice keeps having visions about things that are going to happen with Bella and Edward, and sharing them with Edward, obviously, through his mind reading. And at one point, when he has decided he is going to show her, take her to the meadow, and show her who he really is. He– Alice sees a vision of him killing her in the meadow, and he starts to freak out and Alice, like, screams in his head, “No, Edward, you can’t. I love her too.” [Carrie laughs] And I just…like, my gay little heart was just like, “God, I do. I do desperately want the book where instead Bella is like, ‘No, like your sister…I’m in love with your sister.’ And then Alice and Bella get married and it’s great.”
Renata:
And that would be such a stylish wedding.
Kait:
It would be very stylish. I fucking love Alice. I, I know I’m a lesbian, but I do fucking love Alice.
Carrie:
I absolutely am with you a 100% on, um, Alice-Bella. All of that, want that. Um, I think if I was doing it– I feel like the adaptation of this book that we could actually like make during quarantine, is the Jessica Stanley diaries. Like, sort of in the vein of, um, Lizzie Bennet diaries is just Jessica’s vlog, we obviously get Anna Kendrick to do it and she gets like all her musical theater friends to like come in and be guests .And it’s just, the whole thing from, um, from Jessica’s point of view. There are songs. It’s fantastic. Um, and then the other just– the other thing that– there’s a point in the book where, like– it’s when they’re like they really got everything worked out and there’s just like these schmoopy chapters about them being in love. And he like watches her make breakfast, and is thinking about how capable and confident she is and she is literally making cereal and milk. [Renata: And–] And what I– Oh, go ahead.
Renata:
Well, what I thought about that was that he’s like, “And she was making off-brand Cheerios with milk.”And I was like, “Why does Edward know that it’s off-brand Cheerios? Why does Edward know what a Cheerio is…?” And then, I-I guess if he’s reading minds, like people are probably like thinking about Cheerios. I don’t know. [Kait laughs][Everyone starts talking at once]
Carrie:
But what I want–
Renata:
Oh, you know, to talk about other podcasts, um, Justin McElroy has a cereal podcast. What if Edward and Bella had a cereal podcast– [Carrie: Yessss.] –or just like Bella would eat cereal and describe it to Edward because [starts to crack up laughing] he can’t eat cereal. Oh boy, this is really funny to me. It is probably from the pomegranate mimosas. [laughs] [Carrie: It’s great.]
Kait:
Yeah, they’re– and I will say that there is a recurring segment on The Empty Bowl where like, one of them, usually Dan, will have a sample of cereal that he will eat. And, obviously, it’s a podcast; they’re not there together. So he’ll just be describing what the cereal is like to Justin via words which I’ve never been very successful at…using words to describe what it’s like to eat a thing, but I still listen to that fucking podcast constantly.
Renata:
Well and then Edward’ll be like, “Oh, that’s very interesting because I heard Jessica Stanley thinking about Rice Krispies.” Like…[everyone laughs] Um, by the way, casting Anna Kendrick as, if we’re talking about the movie, but casting her as Jessica was such a glow-up for Jessica because she makes that character seem like…so smart and funny and like sassy, and in the book she is just like kinda bitchy and kind of trying to sabotage Bella and just like…not…not nearly as likable or charming as Anna Kendrick makes her. So I say yes, make her do a vlog of this.
Carrie:
I was going to say–
Kait:
Here’s another thing, now that we’re just kind of saying things– [Carrie laughs]
Renata:
Oh, sorry, was our podcast before not just saying things? [everyone laughs]
Kait:
I do…like, I was very weirdly into like the first, I think it’s like five or six chapters of the book, Edward doesn’t– it’s not like Edward sees Bella and he’s like, “Oh, I am in love with her. And I want to spend the rest of my life with her.” Like, obviously, he smells her blood and that is very attractive to him and intoxicating to him. His own personal brand of heroin you may say.
Renata:
I would say that.
Kait:
Um, but, he doesn’t– he’s feeling a thing and he doesn’t know what the feeling is. [Renata: Yes.] [laughing] and it’s very, like, as a person who has been reading so much idiots-to-lovers fic recently [Carrie laughs] like, that kind of like– I don’t know what the feeling I’m feeling is, so I’m going to default to like ‘mad.’ And then later it’s like, “Oh no. It was, it was, I am in love with them. I get it now. Mad was not the right choice.”
Renata:
Well, and like before– like before he’s like in the room with her to smell her blood, he’s just sort of seeing her in other people’s thoughts and memories. And he’s so judgmental and he’s so used to just judging whatever like dumb girls and dumb cereals his classmates are into. [laughter] So he’s just like– he’s just like, “Oh, like she’s overrated. They just think she’s pretty because she’s new here and like, whatever.” Um, and then he like, actually meets and smells and is like, “Oh, I want– I want to eat her like a Cheerios. And then, No. I can’t eat her, I want to love her. And also Alice wants to love her.” It’s like a full, weird chain reaction of thoughts once he sees the difference from like seeing her in other people’s minds versus actually seeing her. [Carrie: Mm-kay.]
Carrie:
I-I– can I– I want to talk about..right, whoever said that the structure as far as when things happen in the book is the same pretty much, but there’s like an extra 150 pages in this book that is either these sort of like side tales about things that happen that I think could be published separately and don’t need to be part of this or it’s—it–it’s just these extended conversations that Edward and Bella have about like pop-culture stuff. It’s like…
Renata:
Yes, they have these conversations that are basically like those Livejournal surveys where they like just go down like, “Favorite movie, favorite color, favorite book, favorite cereal” like whatever [swallows] and-and it’s not like a very good conversation cause it’s just like…a list.
Carrie:
And the thing is, the thing that was getting me, is that like I’ve been getting back into writing some more lately too, and those kind of things can be good prompts to get your characters talking and/or in real life to start a conversation with somebody. But he’s like just quizzing her and like next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. I’m like, “That’s not how this is supposed to work. And does Stephenie understand that Edward does not understand how conversation works?” It’s a puzzle.
Renata:
Right, because it is interesting cause he’s used to not needing to have conversations cause he can just like read thoughts. But also I do kinda feel like when you’re in high school and you’re like maybe a sort of awkward teen, and you’re getting to know someone, I do remember– you know especially maybe like at camp or whatever and just trying to get to know someone quickly. I do. [Carrie: Uh-huh] I do remember having like sort of a similar conversation where you would just go back and like try to find commonalities and not bother with like a “conversation” per say.
Carrie:
So I did–
Kait:
I did want to ask you guys [Carrie: Uh-huh.] I..does that happen in Twilight? Is there just– cause this goes on for, lemme be clear here folks, like four chapters of the book they alternate days when they can ask each other questions. Is that in Twilight?
Carrie:
No–
Renata:
I think a little bit of it is, but they don’t go in as much. [Carrie: Yeah.] But like, you know, he wants to know her favorite book, stuff like that.
Carrie:
There are pages and pages added of that stuff and I really feel at times that Me-Meyer literally just did like journaling prompts about her own tastes and opinions and just put them in as Bella dialogue, or just like tweaked them a little bit, like if you’re doing like head canons for a character on Tumblr or something. And that weird thing is that there are some parts of it, like when he asks her what it’s like to grow up in Arizona that is really kind of like lovely writing and just kind of like thoughtful…um, character explanation and I’m like, “Is this just like Stephenie Meyer doing the Artist’s Way: What do I like about living in Arizona?” [Renata: Yeah.]
Renata:
Okay. I have a couple things– [Carrie: Okay.] I have a couple of things I want to say. One, is like yes this is the same but much longer and I do think at least part of that is that Stephenie Meyer now can be like, “Oooh, an editor? I don’t think so, honey. Like I do what I want.” And I feel like at least when the first Twilight came out somebody at least sort of like could reign her in a little bit. And another thing that happened is I wrote, I’ll try to Google this later and find it, but I remember in the first one it’s very clunky because it was very Bella would be like. “Oh, you have that CD? I have that CD too.” And they wouldn’t say what CD it was. And then in some fan Q&A or whatever, Stephenie Meyer is like, “Oh, it’s Lincoln Park. They’re both listening to Lincoln Park but I didn’t want to say Lincoln Park in the book in case it made it dated. [Carrie laughs] And so the– the original saga is like very stripped of actual pop culture, um, like actual things. Like they, um, you know, named bands or named shows. It’s just sort of like “that movie everyone is talking about” or “my favorite search engine” or whatever [laughter] and in this one she’s like, “Nope. Um, it’s Lincoln Park. It’s Lorenzo’s Oil. It’s Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, and it’s the only book that Bella has in hardback because everything else she likes is classics that’s already in paperback but this one is a hardback.” And like now she’s like going in and she’s like laying down these like specifics of the musical and pop-cultural things that they’re into and it’s weird. It’s clunky and weird.
Carrie:
And yeah, it’s not even as much that I don’t believe people would have that kind of conversation, but I think like as a writer you’re like doing it and then you’re finding the interesting bits and she wasn’t– I mean, maybe those were the most interesting, but they could have been cut like two-thirds, ya’know, stuff like that. So it’s just like–
Kait:
That’s the sort of thing you write for yourself– [Carrie: Yes!] –in your story that you write for yourself that you’re not planning on sharing with anyone ever where Bigfoot and the mothman are in love and they answer questions and then you don’t– when it’s time to show that to other people, you’re like, “Tch. This is just for me.”
Renata:
Yeah, but c-counter point though–
Kait:
I’m pointing that out there, it’s not specific.
Renata:
–counter point though, Stephenie Meyer has spent the last like 12 years at fan-events where people are like, “Um, what’s Bella’s favorite band? What’s Edward’s favorite this? What’s Bella’s favorite cereal?” Um, she has spent– she has gotten so much feedback that this is actually what people want. [Carrie: Uh-huh.]
Kait:
That is– I remember when JK Rowling used to do– I mean, obviously, fucking disclaimer: JK Rowling is a fucking terf and obviously like we don’t go with that, but Harry Potter is also a cultural institution that many of us grew up with, uh, so it is a little weird to try and juggle it, but just to be clear we don’t go with that. [Renata: Yeah.] Trans people are people, their gender identities are what their gender identities are. You don’t get to say otherwise. That aside, I remember back when like the fifth or sixth book came out, JK Rowling did all of these like “tours” and would answer questions and most of the questions were from little kids and most of the questions were like, “What’s Bill Weasley’s middle name? What is Ginny’s favorite color?” What– and grownups on the internet were so mad that like she “wasted her Q&As “ answering these questions. Like this is what the eight-year-olds wanted to know. Like she picked the eight-year-old in the cute Harry Potter costume to answer the question and what she wanted to know was “What’s Bill Weasley’s middle name?” Like– You kinda gotta roll with it sometimes.
Renata:
And you know what and thank God none of those kids are like, “Hey, JK Rowling, what are your complex political opinions because it turns out no one wants to know that. And I– [Carrie laughs] [Kait: Yes.] and that by the way is another thing Stephenie Meyer has been great at. We all know she’s a Mormon, we all know she probably has some like sorta weird conservative, um, beliefs, but she’s keeping her fucking mouth shut and she’s just telling us about Lincoln Park and you know what? Fine.
Kait:
And when she does open her mouth, it’s to lift up other women very frequently [Renata: Yes!]
Carrie:
I-I literally , um, was just having a conversation about– with a friend about like how I picked this fandom up seven years ago as a goof, and it’s like, “Would you have predicted Stephenie Meyer would be like less publicly problematic than, um, Joss Whedon or JK Rowling–[Renata: Right?] –or like other people in…right? [Renata: Right?][Kait: Yes.]
Renata:
By the way, we should drink for talking about other books and other movies. [Kait: Yes. Already did that]
Carrie:
And-and also I really apologize for whatever horrible thing Stephenie Meyer is going to say on the internet between now and the time this podcast comes out.
Renata:
I know. Yeah, I do feel like we’re jinxing it. [Kait: Yeah]
Carrie:
Today–
Renata:
Like anytime we call someone “unproblematic” then tomorrow they come out and are like, “Actually…” [Kait: Yes.]
Carrie:
Today is August 30th, 2020. Stephenie Meyer has not been egregiously bad on the internet that I know of.
Renata:
Yes. We should blur through some of this really quick. So I just wanna see if there’s any other like specific bonkers differences or plot points we want to shout-out. [Carrie: Okay.]
Renata:
Cause I do and it’s the Fast and the Furious scene. [laughs]
Carrie:
How–
Kait:
Okay. Before you get to that, there’s one other thing I want to talk about which is that one thing that I did like sort of appreciate but also still doesn’t make any fucking sense, is that we find out very early on in the book that Edward like kinda considers his going to high school over and over again as like, punishment for being a vampire?
Renata:
Yes, he calls it purgatory.
Kait:
Um, yes.
Renata:
And that’s the only thing that’s made sense, yes. Because the biggest flaw in this is like ,“Fucking why?” Like they all hate high school, why do they keep doing it? But if Edward thinks that he needs to do penance for his vampire crimes, then yes, this is the only way it makes sense. Also Edward casually reveals that he has two medical degrees– [Carrie laughs] –which I don’t think he has said before. And like, how did you go to medical school, like– Stephenie Meyer, there’s a full like Doogie Howser to be had here of this like 17-year-old vampire in medical school. And it’s just, why does he do it?
Kait:
It’s very funny. Especially because like, and I still hold this for the other ones who hate high school who like clearly don’t have like weird hangups about morality and stuff, or just fucking– like you’re already the weird rich family who you don’t socialize with anyone. Just fucking say your kids are home schooled. [Renata: Just say, yeah] Just fucking home schooled them.
Renata:
Yeah, or like online classes. Yeah, because Rosalie is like, “Edward, if you fuck this up and kill Bella, we’re going to have to leave early, and I like it here, cause we can be almost normal here.” And it’s like no you’re not. Like, no one likes you and no one talks– or like, everyone’s obsessed with you, but you don’t talk to anyone. Like what is, what are you getting out of this experience? And that to me is still not satisfactorily answered other than “penance.” But none of the other vampires feel like– none of the other vampires feel like they need to be doing penance for anything.
Kait:
The one other thing that I want to mention before we move on, is…actually, there’s two things. Sorry, I keep coming up with more fucking weirdo things from this book that made me laugh. This one is just very quick. I didn’t realize that the Alaskan vampires that they go to visit, were in the previous books because in the previous books, they do not get the description that Edward gives them here, which is that they are also vegetarian vampires because they wanna fuck human men so bad, that they’re like we don’t want to kill them anymore. We just want to fuck them. So now we’re vegetarians, which was–
Renata:
Yes, they’re the Denali Clan.
Kait:
–just insane. And I loved it. [cracks up laughing]
Renata:
I’m not sure…[Kait is still laughing] because from Bella’s point of view, I’m not sure if Edward would have told her that part of it maybe.
Kait:
It’s true.
Renata:
I did spend a lot of time– I would skim through the book and then I also, because again, drink for me talking about the movie, I’ve seen the movie more. And I kept remembering being like, “Oh, where’s this part that I like?” And then like, for example, when Bella goes over to the house and they make her, uh, Italian dinner and Rosalie breaks a salad. I love that part. It’s only in the movie and I thought it was in the book, but it isn’t. And it should be.
Carrie:
And they’re– they’re watching a cooking show cause like clearly they’ve never cooked before.
Renata:
[softly] cause they don’t know what food is. That’s very charming. Like, there’s a lot of stuff that’s added for the movie that’s not in the book. And it’s better.
Kait:
So that other thing that I wanted to mention was that…um, fucking what was it? Oh my god, I just had it. Oh! So Edward– the reason Edward starts sneaking into Bella’s room at night and following her around everywhere is cause he realizes she’s so clumsy and she hurts herself constantly. And he starts to have like legit anxiety attacks about like how many things there are in the world that can hurt a human person and he says to Emmett, like, “There are earthquakes, Emmett! What if there’s– what if Bella’s in an earthquake?” [laughter]
Carrie:
But by the way, that Emmett stuff…like, the extra sibling stuff is like some of the best things, but Emmett is just like, everybody else is like, “Edward might do a murder.” And Emmett is like, “Maa-an, sometimes a person just smells that good. You gotta do it.”
Renata:
Well, cause Emmett has had two previous um, like, cantante blood people and -killed- both of them. So…Emmett, you know, Emmett wants it to seem reasonable that he’s done this. Um, two things that are casually revealed about how the other vampires spend their time that I would love more info on is, in addition to vampire baseball, which we all know and love, they also play vampire football, which I believe means American football even though, as I think in the notes or maybe the intro, somebody pointed out that soccer makes more sense as a vampire sport, but I think she means American football. And also, Emmett and Jasper play a version of chess that involves eight boards put together– [Kait laughs] –like a super chess? And has “such complicated rules that they won’t tell Edward because he’d cheat.” And so they’re just playing fucking super chess, and this to me [Kait laughing] is such a like, cartoonish, like, what a dumb person thinks smart people do. And it’s like, “Oh, smart people play chess, so like really smart people play super chess.” [laughter]
Kait:
[laughing] Do you remember that Tumblr shit-post that was like, there was a person who said, “I made this for my graphic design class and no one laughed.” And it was Chess 2, now with two more pieces including double bishop and pawn-with-a-gun. [laughter] It’s very good.
Renata:
That is very good. I thought you were going to say the Tumblr shit-post that was like, “If Edward and Bella had smartphones, he would do some like send her a picture of a snail and say, “I saw this snail…effervescent.” [laughing]
Carrie:
I’m sorry, what??
Kait:
That’s also a very good Tumblr shit-post.
Renata:
The snail is effervescent.
Kait:
And is all I think about when I see snails or see the word effervescent now. So good job whoever posted that.
Renata:
Extremely same. It’s very good. Speaking of, this book is in 2005, and so there is flip-phone technology. And this comes up when– but this book also– it goes into a little bit more detail maybe than we’ve gotten, or maybe it goes into it in Breaking Dawn and I forgot, but about how the way Alice’s power works is like when you make a decision she sees how it plays out. So they like fake her out by fake making decisions and then she sees what will happen. And then she’s like, “No, never mind. Don’t do that.” But because she has a flip phone, she like waits for them to make a decision and then just texts them Y or N. So there’s a part when they’re just like– they’re sitting in their car, just like going to their mind palaces and being like, “What if we went to Canada?’ And then she texts back N. And it’s like a) very funny, b) also we’ve learned that this is The Secret, right? Like, Alice is just weaponizing The Secret and she’s like, “Okay, like, if you can see yourself going to Canada then I can see what happens next, cause it’s, you know, if you see yourself in Canada then it’s just like you’re already in Canada. And, oh no, if you do that then this other vampire is going to eat Bella. Never mind. Don’t go to Canada.” And…and…I loved it.
Kait:
I did– I did appreciate more of the like– as a person who has been getting through quarantine by obsessing over the rarest of rare pairs and thinking a lot about how precognition would work. Um…practically, like between reading this, cause it goes into so much more detail about like, fucking everything about Alice I loved. I ate it all up. I love Alice. She’s my favorite. That’s been established. Um, Edward goes into a lot about like how her power works, and between that and watching all of Steven Universe, like I feel like…I’ve been educating myself about [Renata snickers] different ways that people have used and characterized precognition in fiction. I like that. Also, Bella and Alice forever.
Carrie:
All good. So, so, okay, chapter 25. [Renata: Yeah.] I’ve been containing myself and I can’t believe we haven’t gotten there…I’m just going to read what I said on Twitter: “Seriously, anyone who is tempted to pick up Midnight Sun and flip through, please focus your attention on chapter 25, in which at least four or five of the Cullens drive from the Phoenix airport to the suburbs at 140 mph+ in a series of stolen cars. That’s right. Twenty-five chapters in, Stephenie Meyer was like, “Let me present a thing that always works very well in a printed medium, high-speed car chase.”
Renata:
Yes. Okay. By the way, chapter 25 is entitled “Race” and just Race, and in the first Fast and Furious movie, the race that the car race that they’re going to is call Race Wars, which is extremely fucking funny and also problematic, but also fucking funny. And drink for Fast and Furious reference. And Stephenie Meyer, um, in The Chemist she said that she wrote it because she and her friend got real into the Bourne Identity and so they wanted to make Bourne Identity fanfiction. And so it’s her Bourne Identity fanfiction that she like filed the numbers off of. And I do also feel like this is her being like, “Yeah, I want to write a car chase.” Fuckiiin great. Cause this is all, if you recall in Twilight, they split the party and Alice and Jasper take Bella, cause they’re trying to get her away from this tracker, and so, James, who like is obsessed with tracking her, and…and so they go off, and so meanwhile, um, Esme and Rosalie stay in Forks to keep an eye on Charlie in case James tries to eat Charlie, and then the rest of the Cullens go off question mark question mark, we don’t really know cause it’s from Bella’s point of view. And it turns out they’re off being fast and furious in ways that make no sense. Literally, it’s stated that they have caused a 27-car-pileup on the highway and like [Carrie burst out laughing: Sorry.] and they talk about how, “Oh well we can’t just go out and run with our vampire speed because the Volturi would be mad because like humans might see us running so fast.” And like, okay. But you just caused a 27-car-pileup, literally. There’s a part where like run into another car and then they– they keep changing cars so police don’t find them or fucking whatever. Carlisle, Doctor Vampire, pulls sedative in a syringe out of his emergency kit and just like fucking drugs a driver and leaves her on the side of the road so he can take her car. [Kait burst out laughing] These are the good guys, question mark? What the fuck?
Carrie:
[laughing] Look, they have to get to Scottsdale before…Bella dies at the dance studio.
Renata:
Oh my God. This book WILD.
Kait:
–is– there’s– it’s– I…don’t know. Okay–
Renata:
It’s buck wild but it’s also boring. Cause as Carrie said, “As we know from reading the novel, they shouldn’t have Need For Speed the movie, it’s boring to read about a car chase.” You should only watch Fast and the Furious. Don’t read about it. Don’t do it. Cause it’s dangerous and you might get in a 27-car-pileup.
Kait:
I’m gonna remind you of this in case there’s ever a novelization of the Fast and Furious movie that you’re like, “We should read this.”
Renata:
We still SHOULD read it. [Kait: Yes.] [laughing] Because that’s the nature of our podcast. Um–
Kait:
It’s true. It is true. That is true.
Renata:
If you are only looking to read books for fun and enjoyment, no. Probably don’t read it. [Carrie laughs]
Kait:
Yes. Um, so one, like, slightly more serious thing that I did notice and want to comment on, just because I hated it so much, is that, like, obviously, like, Edward’s thoughts are just kinda like gross all the time anyway, but there is a particular line of thought that he returns to multiple times over the first, I don’t know, like half of the book. This book, it was 25 hours. I listened to it first on 1.5 and then at 2.0 [laughing] once I was like, “Shit, I still have to finish this.”
Renata:
Oh my God. You listened to it fast and furious.
Kait:
…I did listen to it fast and furious cause I was furious and I was listening to it fast. Um, but he, and like the first half of the book, when he is reading the minds of the kids at school and like the thoughts that they have about Bella…It is this constant refrain from the other boys of like, “Oh, like, they’re thinking dirty thoughts about her. My thoughts are pure. And that makes my thoughts better. Because I don’t have physical desire for her the way that they– they keep thinking about how much they want to bone her. And that’s wrong. But my thoughts, which are just about how pure she is, are right.” And it was a very weird, sex-shame-y, constantly like– obviously, fucking teenage boys are gonna think gross dirty thoughts about people. Like I’ve accepted that. But also the fact that they have– they’re not acting on those thoughts in like a bad way. The way that the rapists that he “Dexters” [Renata: Yeah.] [laughing] throughout his history do. Like they’re just teen-aged boys who are like, “That girl’s hot. I wish I could fuck her.” Which like, we’ve all, we’ve all–
Renata:
Edward only knows because he is unethically mind-reading, by the way.
Kait:
Exactly. [Carrie: There–] We all see girls who we’re like– well, sorry, Renata, most of us see girls and are like, “They’re very hot.”
Renata:
You know what? If I– There’s some. You know what…now I can’t think of any. [Kait laughs] Like Charlize Theron. I’ll say Charlize Theron and be like, “Yeah, okay.”
Kait:
Oh my God, the old guard just happened…to me. [Renata: Yeah.] But it happened to ME, recently.
Renata:
It’s happened to us all.
Kait:
Anyway, I’m a lesbian.
Carrie:
Okay. Could someone– Edward, literally, at one point is in a tree, outside of Bella’s house, looking in her room while she is sleeping. And he thinks, “If Mike Newton was doing this, it would be gross.” [laughter]
Renata:
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Edward sucks. [take a deep breath] Ummm–
Kait:
Were there any other things–
Renata:
There’s one last thing that I want to say. The epilogue is, of course, when he, like, kidnaps her and takes her to prom. Sort of against her will. And because, you know, cause Bella doesn’t like dancing and Bella doesn’t like people looking at her and Bella doesn’t like Alice putting a fancy dress on her and like whatever. Um, I just want to read this line…describing…describing the prom. “Tonight, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice were really dancing. They melded a hundred styles from other decades into new creations that could belong to any time at all. Of course, they were graceful beyond human ability.” And then later he calls them, “Showboating vampires” which I think should be, um, the name of my band. If I could sing…or do anything musical. Um, but that’s, like, they’re doing what the evolution of dance viral video? What the fuck are they doing? Also, they’re at like a 2005 prom, so they’re doing this to like Black Eyed Peas. Like what? What? All right. So we’re going to do a little dramatic readings now and give you a little dose of what Edward Cullen’s narrative voice is like. And I’m gonna read just the very beginning, just so you can start…start strong? …Well, here we go.
[dramatic reading at 1:09-1:12]
Renata:
Edward is such a shady queen, oh my God.
Kait:
Emmett is a perfect himbo. [Renata: Yes.]
Carrie:
Oh yeah, I was watching the movie last night and there’s like– they’re talking about how, I was watching it with the commentary, and they’re talking about how he’s like eating in the cafeteria where they’re not supposed to be eating. [laughter]
Renata:
[sighs] All right. So, yeah, Carrie, take us to Fast and Furious, please.
Carrie:
Okay, just very quick background: they are in a high-speed chase and for some reason they have to get in another car and they see a Porsche SUV and this transpires.
[dramatic reading at 1:13:11 – 1:14:52]
And then they steal the car and run off. I had actually not clocked the first time around that they had to time it so that they stopped in the shade so no one would see them sparkle. That’s amazing.
Kait:
Oh my God. [Renata: Yes.] These books are DUMB, you guys.
Carrie:
But great, Kait!
Kait:
I mean I’m not– I like lots of dumb things, to be clear. Do you– have you ever watched the Exorcist? Everyone in there except for one person has zero brain cells. They’re all real dumb.
Carrie:
Look, they’re– they have brains, they’re just using them in very strange ways.
Renata:
Yea-aah. Okay.
Kait:
I don’t think– I don’t think– I think maybe the Cullens have like three brain cells; I think Carlisle normally has at least two of them. [Carrie laughs]
Renata:
And Alice’s brain cells are just divided among future timelines, so it’s hard.
Kait:
It’s true, it’s true.
Renata:
Okay. Let’s play Would You Rather. [Kait: Okay.] Would you rather: Watch vampire baseball or human baseball?
Kait:
[sighs] I guess vampire– I don’t want to watch any baseball to be honest, but I guess at least vampire baseball would be novel?
Renata:
Vampire baseball would have a cool soundtrack happening, I think.
Kait:
Probably. I don’t remember that movie, but I’ll take your word for it.
Renata:
Well in the movie it definitely does, I’m just not sure if it happens every time they play. Um, but let’s assume that it does. You would also have to be in the rain for vampire baseball, but I-I got a jacket.
Carrie:
I would like to be out at a sport of some kind in the summer of 2020, but I do feel like with the three on three vampire baseball you could social distance more easily. So vampire baseball.
Renata:
That’s a good point.
Kait:
God, remember the Before Times? [Carrie huffs]
Renata:
Yeah, but I still didn’t go to baseball in the Before Times, but I could have.
Kait:
Me neither. I went to a couple for my dad when he asked. I read a book.
Renata:
I went to Fenway Park to see Lady Gaga and that was great. That was better than a baseball. That’s really what I would rather do, but how about– oh, God. This is something we didn’t really talk about. Jasper reveals that he, you know, Jasper can manipulate emotions and when the bad vampires come to the baseball game he “radiates a potent wave of tedium” so that they will just get bored. But it doesn’t work. But he tries. And that’s a…good. So would you rather have Jasper’s power to deploy a potent wave of tedium or Alice’s power to weaponize The Secret?
Kait:
I-I– this is very dumb. This is very dumb, but I have had two doubles of this drink now, so I would like Alice.
Renata:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, we haven’t been saying every time we drink, we’ve just been drinking.
Kait:
We have been drinking! I would like Alice’s power if only because, as I’ve said, I’ve been writing a lot of fiction about [smacks table] precognition. So it would be great to have some first-person experience. And also maybe to know if the During Time are ever going to end.
Renata:
That would be…
Carrie:
Fair.
Renata:
Though it could beeeee…depressing. But here, by the way, the- the Cullens all have these great powers and abilities,like, and like Edward has two medical degrees and you’re just going to high school. Like, they should have jobs. They should like work for the CDC or some shit. They’re very powerful and they’re just wasting their time repeating high school. [Kait: Yeah] Anyway, I want the tedium power because at the library, we’re open again and people can come in and talk to us. And I get it, like people have been lonely from quar, but then they come in and they just want to like tell me way too much information cause they’re just like happy to be talking to another person. But I’m there all day and I want you to fucking stop talking to me and so…if I could deploy my wave of tedium maybe they would get bored and go home…and not talk to me.
Carrie:
Yeah, I honestly– I respect the hell out of the way Alice deploys her precognition, but it seems exhausting and it does not line up with the way that I think about stuff. Whereas, I really actually honestly love invisibility power, so that I can do whatever and not have to be scrutinized, and I think the potent wave of tedium essentially does that. It’s like people assume what you’re doing is boring and you get away with shit.
Renata:
All right. Last off, I want to ask: Would you rather eat off-brand Cheerios or eat at Steaks and Cakes?
Kait:
Eat at Steaks and Cakes. I eat a lot of off-brand things, cause generic is cheaper. Off-brand Cheerios universally taste bad and also, to bring The Empty Bowl into it again for the second time in this Twilight podcast, um, Oats N’ Honey Cheerios are the best Cheerios and they should be renamed Regular Cheerios and regular Cheerios should be named Worst Cheerios. [Renata laughs] Which I should say that that take is copyright Justin McElroy TM TM TM.
Renata:
I like Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.
Carrie:
Does Steaks and Cakes do curbside?
Renata:
Oh my God. That’s such a good question. And um…
Kait:
I can’t believe it hasn’t come up before now.
Renata:
That’s such a good question. I feel like no don’t, because they don’t– [laughter] I do feel like Steaks and Cakes, our sponsor, I do think that it’s run by Trumpers, who are anti-maskers. [laughter]
Carrie:
Okay. As much as I-I powerfully dislike off-brand Cheerios, I am not ready to be inside a restaurant run by people who think that Coronavirus is a hoax.
Renata:
Yeah….shit.
Kait:
I feel that.
Renata:
I feel that too. A-and like, I don’t know because this is a fictional restaurant, but I just really feel in my heart that it is a fictional restaurant run by fictional Trumpers.
Carrie:
I am so sorry that I have ruined Steaks and Cakes, and you guys may need a new sponsor.
Kait:
It’s fine. We’re very drunk. Maybe we won’t remember this by the next episode.
Renata:
I dunno, Kait. What does your heart tell you about Steaks and Cakes?
Kait:
I mean I do– I do feel like– I do feel like it’s origins from Christian Mingle the Movie would indicate that perhaps it is run by Trumpers.
Renata:
And also I don’t…
Kait:
Let’s move on! Let’s move on! [Renata: Okay. Okay.] I don’t want to think about this anymore.
Renata:
Let’s do reader’s advisory, and we’re going to keep this pretty short because we’ve been talking too long and also cause we’ve done 700 reader’s advisories for Twilights already. So we’ll link to those and you can go back to them and look at other stuff we’ve said before. But I want to tell you about a new book that we haven’t talked about before, cause it’s not even out yet, comes out next month. And it’s an anthology called Vampires Never Get Old, edited by Natalie C. Parker and Zoraida Córdova. And it sounds dope cause it’s young adult vampire short stories written by like queer authors and authors of color and I’m excited for some….for some fresh new vampire stories. And– Yeah.
Kait:
My– oh, go on. Sorry, I didn’t realize you weren’t done.
Renata:
I-I guess I really was. I was just gonna say and-and-and I’m excited. About it.
Kait:
My one reader’s advisory is the 2019 Charlie’s Angels reboot which got a bad rap from men who are critics that it was bad, but actually, it was fucking amazing. Kristin Stewart is in it. She can be like as weird and queer as she wants. It is– there’s– it’s great. We just watched it again. I saw it in theatres twice and we just watched it again the other night and it’s still very good and Kristin Stewart is very good in it. Everyone is really good in it. If you’re into that sort of thing which I am.
Renata:
By the way, one of the times Kait sat in theatres was with me, and I’m not like gay for Kristin Stewart or Christian Mingle, but I…even if you’re not like…appreciate it on that level, it’s just like a really fun movie. And if you are, yeah, there are super hot ladies in it. And you can– that’s also enjoyable. [Kait: Yeah] And also what’s-his-name is in it. The boy from To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Noah Centineo was in it. [Carries: Oh yeah!] If you like to look at a boy once in a while. [Carrie: Yeah!]
Kait:
It’s just– it’s very good– it’s very good about female friendship and relationships and like propping that up above any like love interest bullshit. Anyway, go watch iiiiit.
Carrie:
That– I think Elizabeth Banks is the only director who has really understood how to use Kristin’s star persona and she’s amazing in that movie. Very quickly, I’ve listened to the past reader’s advisory, and just because I’m very late to get on the train, I think we talked about Maggie Steabatter on the first Twilight episode. And so I just have finally recently read the Raven Cycle series which I recommend, and also it has some cute romance and male POVs that are not fucking gross and is weirdly horny for cars. For reasons I don’t understand.
Renata:
Yeah. Well, Maggie is horny for cars, openly, and also the newest one came out like last year maybe. Um, and it’s– it’s very, um, openly, canonically queer in a way that-that’s charming and that Stephenie Meyer, uh, will not do.
Carrie:
Yeah. Actually, my reward for finishing Midnight Sun and doing this podcast is I finally get to read that book.
Renata:
Yeah, it’s very good. Um, okay. What’s– we’ll have these and more ones up at Worstbestsellers.com under reader’s advisory. Um, what is our candy pairing? By the way, I didn’t really– I’m hungry. So… [Carrie laughs]
Kait:
Well, okay. We’re almost done. My candy pairing, don’t eat these they’re bad, is the same Twilight Necco heart wafers from our first episode six years ago. So, like, it’s the same thing. You know what it is, except now like six years have passed and it’s just– you can recognize that it’s not good.
Renata:
No, they’re stale. [Kait: Yeeeaah.] Mine is, remember when they changed green Skittles from being lime to being green apple? And you were like–
Kait:
I don’t eat Skittles.
Renata:
…okay. Well, do you at home remember when they changed lime Skittles, the green Skittles, became green apple? And it– I think it’s universally a bad decision. No one likes the green apple Skittles, and I think that original Twilight was a lime Skittle and this Edward Twilight is a green apple skittle, where, like, it looks the same but it’s worse.
Carrie:
[laughs] Um, last week I was in the store and I saw they already had Halloween candy out and they hand candy corn pumpkins. It’s the wrong time of year to eat them, they don’t really taste like Halloween candy, but they were in the store and I did purchase and consume an entire bag. So, Midnight Sun.
Renata:
Man, those are good. I would eat those. Um, okay. What about The Rock Paper Snikt!, which is of course the game where Kait says who Dwayne the Rock Johnson would be if he were in this movie– if he were in this book, and-and, it would just be The Fast and the Furious, and I will say who Wolverine would be if he were in this book. And Carrie will choose which most enhances the book or can choose paper which is to leave it as is.
Kait:
Um, I forgot to do this part of my homework…[Carrie cackles] So…
Renata:
It would– it would just be Fast Five– it would just be Fast Five. And it would just be the cool car chase and the Rock would be there.
Kait:
Yes. Also, while he was doing the cool car chase, he’d be like, “Bella, actually you’re in love with Alice and you should kiss.” [Carrie laughs]
Renata:
Cool. W-well, if Wolverine were in this movie, and I’m sure that I have invoked vampire Jubilee before because we do talk about vampires like a lot, but, in the comics Jubilee is– I don’t know if she’s a vampire right now, for a long time she’s been a vampire. And so Wolverine would bring vampire Jubilee to come and meet the Cullens. And Edward would immediately be like very judgmental of her and think that she is shallow like Rosalie, but it doesn’t matter because what would happen would be Jubilee and Alice would go on a shopping spree and just get like bright yellow accessories and there would just be like a long mall montage. And that’s what would happen.
Carrie:
Okay. Am I picking now? [Renata: Yeah.] Um, I do love a shopping spree, but I think I have to go with the one that ends up with Bella-Alice which would also definitely involve shopping sprees. So I will go Rock.
Renata:
Okay. Fair. And also Fast Five is…a really good movie.
Carrie:
I’ve not seen that one.
Renata:
Um, okay. What do we think the moral of the story is?
Kait:
My moral of the story is a moral that we use a lot in various different incarnations. And in this particular incarnation, I am going to say, “Ban vampire men.”
Renata:
Mine is along that line. And it’s just um, “No one actually wants to know what men are thinking.”
Kait:
That’s correct.
Carrie:
Mine is, um, literally, “Take a drink. Nothing matters. No text is permanent. No story actually has any kind of relevance to anything. Postmodernism. Take a drink.”
Renata:
[quietly] Holy shit, nothing does matter. Um, except for cats matter. ACAB. All cats are beautiful. [laughter] My beautiful cat, Duarte, is here to share his opinions about the books.
Duarte:
Me-oooooow.
Renata:
Yeah, Duarte, you’re right. We’ve known since book one that Edward likes to eat mountain lions and he should be canceled. And, by the way, this has come up and I’ve thought it before, like, ecosystems really rely on the predators to keep everything in check. If you’re vampires out here eating all the mountain lions there’s gonna be too much deer, too much rabbits, it’s going to be chaos. They’re all gonna starve, it’s really problematic. And there’s a part where Edward mentions that and he’s like, “We should move on. We ate too many mountain lions out of this part of the park”. And Alice is like, “Treat yo self.” And like Alice, you should be able to see the environmental destruction that you guys are wreaking in this park.
Kait:
Yes, yessss. That’s what I was gonna say is that like yeah, obviously, Alice is my favorite, Duarte, I don’t make that a secret, but she really is wrong there and she really should be doing more to help, you know, protect the mountain lions in that region of Forks or Washington or whatever. Yeah.
Renata:
They should just– I-I don’t know why they don’t just steal human blood from blood banks. That seems like the most reasonable solution. But anyway, Duarte, thanks for reading this. I know it was really long and I’ll let you get back to your nap now. Do any humans have any closing thoughts?
Carrie:
Thank you. Thank you for doing this and also I hate you. [Renata cackles] You, and you being Stephenie Meyer.
Renata:
Hah haaaah. Yes, um, Carrie thanks for coming back. My thoughts, my closing thoughts are just like drunk emotional, “Thanks for us doing this podcast for so long, and thanks for listening. And even Stephenie Meyer, thank you for putting this book out. I…guess, and–
Kait:
Ye-aah. I just– like always, and I know we say this all the time, but always like, when we started this it was just a thing that we could do because we were living very far apart at the time. We thought it would be cool to do a podcast together, but like, people care about it. Lots of people have listened to this podcast and said that it’s important to them and that– I’m just– I’m so appreciative of all of you because it- with—I am so glad that you can get something out of it. And I hope that we can continue to live up to your expectations.
Renata:
Do people have expectations?
Kait:
I…probably.
Renata:
Stop it. [bursts out laughing] Stop doing that immediately. Um, if you have them I guess you can tell them about– tell us about them, on the internet. Worstbestsellers.com. Facebook and Instagram, we’re Worstbest [fumbles title] fuck. [laughter]
Kait:
Worst Best Sellerssss with an s.
Renata:
With an s. And on Twitter, we’re @worstbestseller with no s. Um, because, we are too drunk to properly pronounce all the s’s in it. So it’s gone. It’s gone.
Kait:
It’s true. Um, you can subscribe to us on Stitcher, Itunes, google play, apple podcast. Apple podcasts and iTunes are the same thing. Sorry, I just am used to saying “Stitcher, Itunes, Google Play”….um, Apple podcast, Spotify, all the places where podcasts are. You know where podcasts are because you are listening to this podcast right now. Um. [Renata: Whoah.] If you subscribe to us, please read and review, if you all those things. Also, we just would love you. We would love you. It’s quarantine. What else do you have going on besides rating and reviewing podcasts? Not much, probably. [Renata quietly: Not much, probably.] We have a Patreon at patreon.com/worstbestsellers. You can pledge a small monthly recurring donation. It goes to us so we can pay our editor. We can, we’re gonna pay a transcriber to do a couple episodes cause it’s so slow going when we do it ourselves.
Renata:
We pay the Quileute for their, um… [Kait and Carrie: Yes! Yes!]
Kait:
For that. And you get things. We have a newsletter. We have…other stuff that I can’t remember what it is right now, but those things are happening.
Renata:
It’s happening.
Kait:
And we also have merch which you can find by going to worstbestsellers.com and clicking on merch. If you have any merch ideas, please send them to us, and we will make things about our podcast that you can wear on your body.
Renata:
Or your baby’s body. [Kait: Yes] Someone recently bought one of our Steaks and Cakes onesies, and if that was you please do send us a picture of your baby. [Carrie: For sure.]
Kait:
I should buy a Steaks and Cakes t-shirt for my nephew.
Renata:
Yeah! Put Steaks and Cakes on your babies. [laughs loudly]
Kait:
If you– if you want to follow me on social media, I’m taking a Twitter break right now, but I am at @fourteenacross all spelled out, on all the social medias.
Renata:
I’m @renatasnacks.
Carrie:
Um, I’m @carriempruett and I had been on a Twitter break the last few times I was on here, but I’ve actually been posting a lot of stuff with like #twilighttweets relating to getting ready for this podcast. So, probably anything that I didn’t read out loud already on this podcast is on there.
Renata:
There’s a lot. There’s a lot of Twilight content. Okay. Thank you again to everyone for everything and we’ll be back in two weeks with a—another bachelor book. Which is again, one of our very first episodes was a Bachelor book and now we’re doing another one. And this one is The First Time by Colton Underwood.
Kait:
And Rebecca Kim Wells is going to be our guest for that. And you should go buy, um, Shatter the Sky in paperback and preorder Storm the Earth which is coming out in October. cause they’re great and Rebecca’s great and I used to see her all the time and now I miss her because it’s quarantine and I don’t see anyone.
Renata:
The books are great. We’ll tell you more about them when we’re more sober probably. [Kait: Yesssss.]
Carrie:
I just realized that like the Bachelor book was about the show The Bachelor and I was like, “Is this like a subgenre of horny romance that I’m not familiar with?” The Bachelor books?
Renata:
I mean, yes, also, yeah. Sorry. The—we’re changing gears. It’s reality television time now. [Carrie: Okay. Cool. Exciting! Exciting] Bachelor the show, TMC. Um, okay. We gotta stop. We’ll stop. We should stop, but– [Kait: ‘kay.] drinks. And we’re gonna hydrate and end recording an-and thank you and goodbye.
Carrie:
Bubyeeee.
Kait:
Byeeee!
[Intro music plays]
