Fanfic Review: Soulmates, Feelings, Belonging By CaraNo

Soulmates, Feelings, Belonging by CaraNo

The Dominating Discourse in all of this genre of fanfic is sex, graphic hard porn sex in thousands of  stories based on Meyer's characters of Bella and Edward and the rest from Twilight. Although the names are the same, the characters are drawn with different attributes and qualities, different selves elaborated, changed, and different plots but always the true everlasting hot love between Edward and Bella.


People know what they do. They frequently know why they do what they do. But what they don't know is what they do does. Or: People know what they say. They frequently know why they say what they say. But what they don't know is what they say does. - Michel Foucault


You must change the way you think.   

The theme  of Twilight is Time as in Proust. Without this slow time, an earlier time, and the leisure time that goes along with it, we cannot have the story of gazing, seduction, imagination, contemplation and growing feelings. Most of the authors do not know where to go when this has run its course and sexual penetration has taken place. Time then accelerates, plot enters, and the soap opera, mystery, excitement and denouement begins and ends.  As soon as time accelerates, they all fall apart. So they go for the normal HE, usually with marriage, house and children. Car too. Even Meyer could not sustain the internal dialogue for her entire series, but the uneven saga is still absorbing and addictive.

Foucault has given us a toolbox to use to change our thinking. The toolbox is genealogy. He got it from Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals but so reviled is Nietzsch from the poison of Hitler's admiration during the Third Reich that even the brave Foucault said he did not fully acknowledge him earlier and wished he had done so.

But once Foucault has convinced you, and if you read him seriously and thoroughly, you will be convinced, because his exquisite powerful prose leaves you no place to hide from his devastating logic. So linear time, history, progress, Marxism and Freud's developmental theory go down into the  dirt. To think differently requires you stop thinking in the dialectic ( Vija Kinski in Cosmopolis) and think genealogically. Until you find Baudrillard and his Forget Foucault, but don't find him too fast. Stay with Foucault until you are saturated. Or until your panties are soaked.

In CaraNo's Soulmates, Feeling,  Belonging a Foucauldian eye  trains you to see within the folds (pun intended), the words, thoughts, feelings, nuances, subtleties that pass quickly and don't return. The parts you are barely going to notice which quickly get submerged. This is the part of history that hides in the archives and reveals the Dominating Discourse of an era, the part that was censored. All that was so hidden invisibly, it was smothered or not allowed to be heard or seen. When an irruption occurs, it appears as a 'cut' in the DD, but while you are in the DD you will not become aware of the cut until much much later. I assert that Twilight is just such a cut. bringing with it an entire change in thinking for many women concerning their sexual feelings and practices and their choices in men.

Back to Soulmates and CaraNo. Hidden within the folds of this story are rather amazing treasures that few are going to notice. Put on your Foucaudian glasses if you don't have Fouauldian eyes, and look with me.

It opens with Bella in a boring unhappy marriage with Jacob. They have been childhood friends, married after high school, go away to NYU to university and come back to Forks. Bella is in a kind of zombie state as in New Moon and decides to see a therapist. So her relationship with Jacob has progressed in linear time, developing, with no transgression.

I should feel frustrated. I should miss writing. I should be sad for not caring. But I'm a robot. I feel nothing. Chapt 1

Here she is mirroring Eric Packer in Cosmopolis: He didn't know what he wanted. And of course Packer indulges in some hot sex with different partners during the day. But DeLillo is going to break this open for you.

On her way in to her first appointment she meets Jasper, whom she knew in high school, had a crush on, and who has returned to Forks, and her therapist is Edward who lives in a loving homosexual relationship with Jasper.

I decided to tease him to relieve the tension, "So, how was lunch? Did you enjoy him- I mean it… I mean, was it mindblowing… the food, that is," I smirked.

 "Wow, good looks and a smooth talker. Jasper never stood a chance, did he?"

"Okay, Bella," he chuckled with a shake of his head, "How about we start, huh? I need to prove myself now that I am in fact a professional."

"Oh, I'm sure you are," I smiled innocently. Chapt 1

So far its not bad. The therapy sessions are handled well. It's basically pop psychology but decently done. Edward asks questions and Bella talks with her eyes closed. This Bella is funny and assertive and witty when she occasionally comes out of her torpor during the therapy hour. When they get to discussing sex these amazing vignettes come out.

I continued, "I've never been satisfied by him, and I wanted us to try new things. He didn't want that. I gave up trying. Chapt. 1

"That's when I first realized that I didn't just want more, but I needed it. I recognized myself in what they were doing. So, I started reading about some stuff online that I wanted to try, and I would also talk to Alice. I would bring it up with Jake, or sometimes surprise him, but he never responded well."

"Well, yeah, I brought it up. The first time it wasn't really anything special. Just some sexy lingerie, a vibrator, the suggestion of trying more positions. That was Alice's advice – to start off slow – and I agreed.

"I think it was the third year in college, and Alice was once again the inspiration. She wasn't with Alec anymore. She was with Tanya. And I found it very erotic. That was my trigger to bring it up with Jake again. I thought that maybe what I suggested wasn't enough… maybe he wanted more. So, I suggested more toys, and also a threesome."

"The last time I approached Jake was when I was writing my fourth book. It was about a man and a woman this time, and my hopes were to involve Jake a little. There was one thing in particular that I really wanted to try – and because I was writing the book from the female character's point of view, I wanted to be thorough, and explain the feelings in detail. But when I brought anal sex up with Jake, he was repulsed."

.... "Yeah, so he didn't want that. But I didn't want my book to suffer, so I did extensive research on the subject instead. I interviewed Alice, Tanya, and a few of their friends – both male and female – I read books, and Tanya also hooked me up with a bunch of toys I didn't even know existed.

"Since she and Alice had agreed on not seeing men together – but still wanted to feel something more than fingers – they had a fucking room full of toys." I grinned at the memory of them showing me. "So, in order to get as close as I could without cheating, I used the toys Tanya gave me… on myself. It wasn't easy but still very pleasurable, and I really wish Jake would've been there… but he wasn't. I gave up after that. Chapt 5

Bella is longing for intimacy, and feels sex is the doorway to it.
But what if?
Suppose Jacob was really a good guy, didn't cheat, compatible with Bella, worked every day, reliable, nice but there was no hot loving feelings between them, which is the case in Soulmates. You know like all the married couples you see at the mall and the supermarket. The guy you look across the room at while watching TV. What you are craving is intimacy, lustful affection and sex, those feelings Rob Pattinson gives you. But you're never going to get that from DH, a contemptuous term, the initials these fangirls give their hubby.

So you go out and buy sex toys. Maybe you even plan a threesome or foursome. Something to add spice to the conjugal sex, married or not. Buy magazines at the supermarket checkout counter. They always have articles on bringing back the passion in your marriage or relationship. Have an affair. Get a divorce. Remarry and find the same-old, same-old. Shop until you drop. Consume not cum but toys.

And folks that's what most people do. That's the sad dirty little secret. And there it is hidden in this fanfic with its hard core porno sex.  Hyper-sex is porn and there's no sex in it, just the production of seduction and sex. Just go shopping for sexy stuff, get a facial, get a makeover, do some surgery, read some fanfic, change partners, shop, have another kid, whatever, to produce seduction. But you can't. Seduction cannot be produced. 

Twilight Premiere

Patti Smith - Because the Night

This is what CaraNo's Bella wants, so go to youtube and watch and listen to it

Fanfic Review: Isla de Cullen By CaraNo

Warning: Porn links ahead!

Edouard Manet - Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe 1863 Salon des Refuses

The above painting was a huge scandal in 1863 when it was first exhibited as is the photo in the fanfic story in our time. Some things never change. 

fanfic: Isla de Cullen - Lolypop82 photo MANIP

Isla de Cullen has moved to wordpress

This fanfic is fascinating in a variety of ways. Reading Isla de Cullen through Baudrillard invites the reader to contemplate what Baudrillard has written about sex, femininity, women, and the unequal relationship between women and men, as he describes it, because this fiction is fictionalizing Baudrillardian theory. This in itself is enough to recommend reading it, although there are many other compelling reasons, such as very erotic and graphic sex that is vanilla NOT.

Here is a LINK to the readable version in b & w. Why a fanfic on Twilight should be so cutting edge in post modern theory is an enigma to me. Unless this means that women are starting to see that their liberation since the pill has some serious flaws. Of course Stephenie Meyer started it, but fanfic on Bella and Edward has often gone beyond the original Twilight in scope and detail. The immediate reason is that Meyer's Twilight and certain fanfic fiction based on it, challenges the PC Feminist Dominating Discourse, and arouses the ire of PC feminists and authors of young adult fiction for girls. The PCFDD has effectively censored most of what is seen and heard by women forcing popular authors, filmmakers, directors of films and screenwriters, advertising agencies, textbook publishers, and all and sundry that pitch their wares to girls and women to embrace the dogma of PCFDD, consciously or unconsciously. It is a fact that the Dominating Discourse is invisible to you while you are in it. The fish and water analogy, eh?

But some fanfic authors, perhaps because they are publishing on blogs and internet sites, show far more independent thinking.  CaraNo, the author of Isla de Cullen is definitely challenging, defying, and dueling with PC feminist dogma in violating the censorship that always occurs within the Dominating Discourse  in any area during the length of time it dominates. Michel Foucault explicitly details and lays open the crushing domination of this Dominating Discourse beginning with The Order of Things, The Archeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Clinic, The History of Sexuality (vol 1,2,3) and everything else he wrote. During his extraordinary career he changed the perception of all the human sciences and made inroads in architecture, painting and sculpture and in fact there is little he did not influence. He was considered the leading intellectual force in Europe until his death from AIDS in 1984. Foucault was open about his homosexuality and his consensual S/M practices.  He is not anywhere near mainstream in the US. This is what makes Isla de Cullen so startling.

Foucault's first major challenge came from Jean Baudrillard in his long essay/book Forget Foucault. Baudrillard states in it that Foucault spoke so perfectly about power only because power was over, finished, done. He added that Foucault's prose itself was a spiral of power. Going on from that insight he says that whatever you are writing about, your prose must mirror the subject even more. Stephenie Meyer wrote about seduction and her prose is even more seductive than the seduction she is writing about. And she wrote so well of seduction ritual because the ritual of courtly love, is finished, done. Twilight. Good title. And it is Baudrillardian theory that we see fictionalized in Isla de Cullen, probably without any awareness at all from the author. What is interesting is that CaraNo breaks with the Dominating Discourse of PC Feminism and then leaps across the abyss to follow Baudrillard all unknowingly, which, of course, is exactly why she succeeds. Baudrillard has drawn the hatred of PC feminists in far greater degree than Stephenie Meyer, but CaraNo in her Isla de Cullen has come under the real threat of having her fiction removed from the fanfic site, forcing her to go to blogspot, but it looks like they didn't remove her after all. I am sure the feminist outcry was serious. She says she is from Sweden and perhaps this is why she is different. Or maybe she is just more of a visionary with courage than other writers of fiction for women. IMO I think men should be reading fanfic for the benefit of the girls/women in their lives.

While most of the fanfic starts with Edward as super controlling, they regress Edward to a state of dependency on Bella. Bella either develops into a more acceptable version to PC feminists (as in the screenplays by Melissa Rosenberg in the Twilight films) or Edward has serious addiction problems, to weaken him. The masculine male is in serious difficulties in real life, in fiction, in non-fiction, in the workplace, and he responds with all the strategies that women used to use to sabotage male power.

CaraNo imagines a different kind of man. Not at all complex and complete, but he is a beginning. He is assertive and masculine, often tender and compassionate. The PCFDD will see him as sado-masochistic and he can be seen in this way if one wishes to enter the psychological swamp of interpretation. (Just think about the incest between Lot and his daughters in precession. Do you really want to go there?)There is no doubt that he is erotically seductive. Why? What are his qualities that stimulate this response in women who read this story? Is part of the reason that men are too PC feminized for us? Female adoration of Rob Pattinson has a great deal to do with Stephenie Meyer's invention of the new male in her fictionalized character of Edward. Baudrillard has proposed the invention of the new masculine out of the hysteria of the female, as the femme fatale was invented our of male hysteria. Only now the femme fatale can find no one to seduce or who is worth her time to try to seduce. CaraNo adds additional dimensions to Edward in sexualizing him. Her drawing is not perfect and that is a real plus. Writers have a way to go with male characters. I wonder where they will go next? DeLillo gets constantly trashed -  by guess who? -  for his male characters.

CaraNo's Edward remains a strong male figure throughout. And Bella is truly Other. She is the Baudrillardian feminine who plays a double game consciously. She understands her feminine power, and chooses to display submissive signs, which this Edward demands.  Baudrillard makes the distinction between liberation and free. He says that women have been falsely liberated (only slaves can be liberated) and have lost their freedom. Now seduction must be produced with products and surgeries, but Baudrillard tells us as does CaraNo, that these "floating signs" of seduction are empty signs or they are "signs" masking gender ambiguity. The great power of seduction is that it cannot be produced. And clearly Rob Pattinson is producing it NOT. That's Judith Butler on the left, the go to person on gender. Gender Trouble and the rest of her books at Amazon.

Here is Passion for real by Patti Smith:

Because the Night youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0brHGJ6xqbk  Or paste it in

You are watching and listening to pure passion without all the "floating signs" of femme.

Many of the concepts discussed above are already embedded in my other blogs. Maybe I will get around to linking for you. Maybe not. I did some anyway.