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