Question about age gap

[Steerpike]

What was the reaction like? Was the vampire mentally like an adult and what age if yes?

I looked it up to refresh my recollection. Shori is 53 years old but looks like a 10 year old black girl. She is mature in how she acts—not like a child. My reaction when I first read it wasn’t to feel weirded out on behalf of Shori. You’re in her POV and Butler establishes her maturity as being commensurate with her true age. There’s still the fact that her partner is physically attracted to what appears to be a 10 year old girl, which shaped my view of that particular character.

Knowing Butler, she isn’t doing any of this without careful thought and a reason. She’s trying to reflect something about society back to the reader. We know black children are more likely to be hypersexualized and perceived as older than they are, and consequently are often treated differently from white children. Maybe she’s flipping that around and presenting us with a situation where we know the mc is a wise, smart 53 year old. How much do we respect her autonomy based on her appearance?

In a way, many of these vampire books could be seen through this lens, whether intended by the author or not. How does society view the sexual lives of young women (or older teens) in comparison to males of the same age group. Why are we content to watch Buffy go through physical and emotional trauma of fighting demons every night but see a line as crossed when she ends up in bed with Angel? You can look at this sort of thing through the lenses of a puritanical history, patriarchy, and possession and control over women’s sexuality and sexual expression.

All of which is why it is important to remember these are works of fiction and have to be treated as such. They can be vehicles to explore ideas, and a questionable relationship in fiction may be trying to tell the reader something or force the reader to examine the world in a certain way. They don’t have to be (and certainly should be assumed to be) endorsements of such relationships in the real world.

 

[PurpleNoxandPizzaDough]

A late reiteration:
(I tend to write a lot because I think as I write and non-attentively self-edit, so sorry for another long post. Also sorry for a post that seemed lecturey. I rarely talk about this stuff with others.)

All of it is just fiction, fantasy fiction at that, with authors' decisions of how they will remodel familiar figures, creatures, ideas, etc. into/for a narrative, and just because they write about taboo things doesn't mean they 100% think people should do or that they themselves do those things. It's kind of like with fashion designers, where the designer will create a dress but never wear some of the clothes they design, and maybe people forget that. However, designers also design clothing inspired by designs and philosophical, technological, etc. ideas that they encounter, internalize, and admire. And then many people want to emulate and repeat parts or the whole product and incorporate the design or its contextual background into their daily lives. They do it without thinking about it much sometimes, too.

So I get why some people get so upset since creative projects (especially written ones) have such influence. However, it's not so black and white. Before people judge a product as immoral, I think they should review where their impressions come from, track how they formed, and what/how their society has learned about the thing they're looking at and where it comes from, then why those people so-so years ago in this location during this period of their history learned it that way. Repetitively so on. It's a lot, but that's how you get to know the depth of humans beyond just yourself. And if you don't want to learn about the depth and twists of humanity, I think it's best to acknowledge it, remember it next time you're making a judgment on something in pop culture (really anything), and not immediately shame others for not thinking exactly like you. Otherwise, you're the Puritan and an agent of oppression yourself. It also needs to be taken into account.

That being said, Meyer didn't really do the barest minimum in terms of technical race creation. Vampires don't physically age--fine. They only have one partner--fine, because I'm not polyamorous nor do I like change. They can gifts like superheroes--fine because to keep a race alive in media, there must be some adaption to what's popular to modern times but not so much. And even this last part when people got mad that her vamps basically could have superpowers, I mean...that's a preference thing. Vampires aren't real. Enjoyable in many aspects (for me), others not so much. As for the ethics of Bella and Edward's relationship in Twilight, I personally wouldn't want exactly that for anyone or myself. Like the watching me while I sleep, not allowing me to see my/Bella's werewolf friends or really listening to me about the safety of visiting them, trying to force me/Bella to abort my baby even though I/Bella expressly stated that I would give birth to it even though it might kill me. Nor would I jump off cliffs, which isn't really a moral or ethical dilemma, it's a thing many people use to try to say that no one should like the series like they don't. However, I am also the type of person who wouldn't walk most streets without the sign allowing it.

However I felt the relationship's purpose within that universe provided a conflict: here are violent, revengeful, petty vampires against these two who really aren't like other people. Personally, If I were on a spectrum, I'm the type of reader/media consumer who wants and prefers to witness stuff that fascinates, challenges my ethics/morals, and excites or thrills me more than align with my ethics and morals (within reason, yes, but how exactly do we reason something to be moral? And that's already iffy when you're tasked yourself to buy into a story's precepts. I'm more impressed with creativity and skill than I am with morality--doesn't mean I lack morals altogether. But I'm only one of a particular population out of millions of fiction readers. Everything is learned, so not everyone who thinks about questionable things dissimilar to you is stupid or immoral and deserves to be mocked or ostracized. Then you yourself are not working ethically or morally. It's difficult to ascertain confidently and intelligently where the line between fun and ethical is. And it's a task to make something believable without careful planning and consideration to make it a good, exciting story that's written well and doesn't offend too many people; otherwise you'd be more of a conformist. Not morally bad. But if you expect every fantasy/fiction writer to do that and all media (not just the ones you like), it's possible that you haven't seen older examples of fiction enough to know some elements of fiction to know how fiction/fantasy and writing, in general, can be experimental and questioning or you want people to like what you like.

 

[MiaC]

This is off topic of the age thing but something else that never made sense to me in terms of vampires, how the heck do they get an erection without blood flow????

 

[PurpleNoxandPizzaDough]

This is off topic of the age thing but something else that never made sense to me in terms of vampires, how the heck do they get an erection without blood flow????

Yeah, there's another thing that's never explained or was not thought carefully enough on Meyer's part...most likely the last part. I think that Meyer was really banking on that nuclear-family-with-perfect-lover-equals-happiness as her twist/to-the-next-level plotline to her vampire love story. Instead of a metaphorical or symbolic "family" like Lestat/Louis/Claudia, she went the direct approach. I'm referring to Renesmee's conception here.

As for the erection bit, that's another thing where I don't know if it's just one of the travails of writing fiction and trying to just write a thrilling story or her lax planning. I may account for it by saying that his venom made his penis work like a human's, but that would mean that Bella would go through the vamp-turning process right after (or during?!!) they have sex, and that's way too unbelievable. It is truly only one of the biggest plotholes/race-creation of the series. Unless others can explain? I'm at a loss...Maybe the venom does fill the penis, but to turn into a vamp the venom has to be injected into the bloodstream directly? But then STIs are spread through the genitals and getting not contact with open wounds and exchanging blood, so.....

I say the venom because apparently vampire venom just replaces blood as the circulatory vehicle for vampires the way blood was for their human selves. It's also more than that. Venom is now their saliva, the stuff on their eyeballs, etc. Blood is, again, like a cheeseburger rather than something carrying hormones for Twilight vamps. I say that like we all don't already know that.

 

[PhilyG123]

My guess is because there are so many real life examples of older men dating young women where it can be seen as predatory. Immortal beings is just fantasy where everything (to a limit) goes.