Twilight

So naturally, Valentine’s day is coming up so I had to make sure I posted something valentine’s related. So, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. The third movie is ready to air on Netflix on the 12th of February following consecutive years of pre-Valentine’s Day premiers. The first two movies were a big hit however, I personally felt let down by the second movie, I felt like it created continuity errors and made me like almost all of the characters less. So, I asked on my Instagram whether y’all wanted a TATB post before or after number three and I got a resounding response to before, so here is everything that doesn’t make sense or that I find annoying in the first two movies.

Quick reminder – this will not be related in any way to the books and I will therefore not refer to them, if the books explain things better I find that irrelevant however still feel free to let me know.

Firstly, Josh treats Lara-Jean like a kid, but they’re like the same age? Because he’s younger than Margo but used to be childhood friends with Lara-Jean. So why does the whole first scene of him high-fiving her make me feel like he sees her as the kid sister of his girlfriend.

“Mom told me never to go to college with a boyfriend”, well that’s sage advice, so, say Margo is 18 because she just graduated and Kitty is like 12. If Kitty was still eating baby food when their mum died then… Margo was probably like 8. She probably told her 8 year old daughter, if you have a boyfriend honey, don’t ever take him to college with you, I don’t care how much you love him. What?

Feels weird she said daddy but okay…

Was she going to eat lunch at school with her sister who had graduated? Also, Chris?

John Ambrose wasn’t at that party? Feels like he would have been.

Do Americans have regular carrots? Like not baby carrots, I can’t remember ever having seen someone eating a regular carrot in American TV, or even just carrot sticks they’re always baby carrots.

Someone uncomfortable using their mirrors shouldn’t be allowed to drive without a fully licensed adult, but I guess that is more of a reflection on her dad and the system with which American teens learn to drive (which I find personally terrifying).

Wearing a feminist necklace and a girl power shirt, while saying she needs a boyfriend 🤣. Nice.

John Ambrose, “from model UN”, not that kid who Lara-Jean totally had a crush on for years while they were young and he had a crush on her and now is back like nothing changed?

In the first movie she would’ve told Peter it was John not some guy? I mean she admitted everyone else.

He cant be salty about that just after going on about Gen. Still team Peter though, whoops.

I hate that door with the pole in it. It looks like they’re standing either side of a wall in different corridors.

I hate that they’re wearing the clothes from the day they broke up in that picture. It grinds my gears so much.

This ski trip is so ridiculously unchaperoned.

So, if Peter was ready to meet Gen in the hot tub on the ski trip then why did the entire scene play out how it did. If Peter was waiting to get back together with Gen than why was he being all mopey about Lara-Jean not sitting with him and telling her right then that he has a thing for her then making out with her. You can’t tell me that if he was waiting for another girl that he wouldn’t have been a bit worried about her coming down and seeing that or Lara-Jean finding out he was there to meet Gen. It just doesn’t work.

Similarly, if Gen was meeting Peter in the hot tub what was she doing looking out of a random window down at the hot tub?

Peter should have cleared up the video thing. Also, anonymously emailed Instagram, she could just have like, reported it. There is no need to be anonymous?

Who is this and why wasn’t he in the first movie if he knew them so well as kids?

The change in address, I’m sure lots of you saw it flying around the internet when they decided they would just change the address that Lara-Jean sent the letter to and thought no one would notice, well… we did. Which makes it even more glaring because if John Ambrose lived in California when she wrote him the letter, then look, she didn’t live in the same town as him obviously.

So obviously we have to start with the recasting of John Ambrose which makes me question whether they really did not have faith that they would make a second movie and therefore didn’t cast someone to play him as the later character.

The balloon they let in the sky isn’t the same one from the previous shot. Sorry but it isn’t.

Also, you can’t just pretend the end of the first movie didn’t happen and act like John Ambrose didn’t show up at her house. It seriously make me so infuriated for no real reason, that they put the scene in the end of the first movie when he goes to her door with his letter, then PRETEND IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

No Lara-Jean, he showed up at your house actually.

Lara-Jean is so incredibly annoying in the second movie!

For serious, the model UN doesn’t work. AND THEY HAD THE SOURCE MATERIAL IN THE BOOKS TO NOT MAKE THESE MISTAKES!

Why did Maddie Zeigler accept this role, she’s better than this. I want to see Maddie Zeigler star in her own, non-controversial, teen romance movie. I mean Eva from Dance Moms got one.

Obviously he cant text during practice, and like, he showed up. Also, I think every coach has a rule like that, don’t text during the middle of practice. How is he going to safely train lacrosse and play lacrosse while looking at his phone.

NO singing in number 3 please. Please!

Her necklace disappears and it’s so annoying, seriously go watch it again because she has a necklace on, then she says put it on for me, he is holding the locket, she turns around and doesn’t have a necklace on.

She should’ve told John earlier that she was dating Peter.

Again, so when they break up Lara-Jean is all like oh well if I hadn’t come to the hot tub you would be with Gen, but that isn’t true obviously because she broke up with him for like a couple of months or something over Christmas and Thanksgiving, he didn’t get back together with Gen in that time. It also kind of isn’t his fault that Gen was still into him, yes all of this stuff that doesn’t make sense is bad on Peter but it isn’t 100% him.

I think Lara Jean was leading John on the whole movie, I’m on team not Lara-Jean.

Why would they throw a garden party at the time of year when its cold enough to snow?

But not in the same night…

I want to watch Stormy’s romantic escapades instead, or Chris and Trevor. If I watch the third I expect lots more Chris and Trevor.

And finally, them floating into the sky at the end makes me want to throw up, like my god, they go from standing on the ground to floating above the house, that is awful.

So, don’t forget number 3 comes out just before Valentine’s on the 12th. Let me know in the comments if you’re planning to watch it or not and whether you were team Peter or team John in TATB2. I haven’t decided if I want to watch the third one yet but if you want a post about it too let me know. Thanks so much for reading as always, you can check out my previous posts, social media or follow my blog down below. Don’t forget to like, comment or share if you enjoyed it.

Happy Valentine’s everyone!

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I like many others enjoyed watching TVD in my teens as it aired and still enjoy re-watching it despite some issues present (but more on this later). After several times watching TVD the most recent time I noticed several scenes and lines which directly relate in my opinion to those in Twilight and I will lay them out. Although, I would not consider myself a hardcore Twilight fan I have seen all the movies at least once and the first several times. However, no one can deny the connection between Twilight premiering in 2008 and The Vampire Diaries airing in 2009. Both are book adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries. Granted the Vampire Diaries books were released prior to the Twilight books, the Twilight film was before TVD and therefore, I am equating TVD to being script and cinematically similar to Twilight. Both include tales of vampires, humans and werewolves and lots of teen drama and angst. I merely wrote this as a bit of fun and to point out some things you may not have noticed, there is no intention to offend any parties involved in the creation of either work as I do enjoy both and am a fan. So, here are all the similarities I noticed when re-watching the first few episodes of TVD, forewarning of spoilers.

1. A newcomer to town… who’s not so new
As we know Twilight begins with Bella Swan arriving to town to stay with her father. Now although Elena is not the newcomer to town there are newcomers, Stefan and Damon who become the talk of the school. Bella used to holiday in Forks which makes her not a total alien there and Damon and Stefan both have spent many lifetimes in Mystic Falls before returning once again.

2. Much like Edward, Stefan is the mysterious man in the school who everyone (particularly the side characters) is interested in.

3. Vampires
Now, I know this is an obvious one but there was a clear interest in television and film in the supernatural, but it is a similarity between the two as well as the slightly later addition of werewolves to TVD in season 2.

4. Vampires gotta wear sunglasses I guess…

5. It is also a vampire family, granted a much smaller family that the Cullen’s but a family of vampires nonetheless.

6. We have the changing eyes in relation to blood lust.

7. Then there is the obvious, we eat animals trope from Twilight which we see again from Stefan.

8. The very stalkery Vampires:

Look at this creeper out here honestly,

Then Damon breaks into Elena’s room while she’s asleep and later when Elena finds out Stefan is a vampire and she’s in her room with the window open, Stefan jumps through her window into her bedroom. That is 100% an Edward move, because he did it constantly.

9. Also, now come on, you can’t tell me these aren’t the same scene…

10. Super fast running, super strong Vampires in both, we also have the super hearing thing and the jumps that make no sense at all. Basically, the vampire lore and powers are almost the same minus the vervain and mind reading future seeing powers.

11. Old ass Vampires who choose to go back to high school which I just can’t understand. Why would they all want to go back to high school to have to worry about high school stuff like exams and learn about the history which they already lived through? Also, Stefan supposedly already had college degrees so school must be such a bore. ALSO also, just because you stay in the body of a teenager surely doesn’t mean you don’t age psychologically and grow up, they’re both over 100 years old after all.

At least the TVD Vampires don’t also sparkle, they sizzle instead!

12. Werewolves:

Although, Tyler doesn’t become a werewolf and they aren’t introduced until later in the season it is still a similarity. It is also a similarity that Jacob doesn’t become a werewolf until after the first movie and Tyler doesn’t until season 2 episode 7. Although, Uncle Mason is introduced season 2 episode 1.

13. Questionable parenting:

So we are led to believe in both medias that the parenting is subpar for the mains. However, I honestly have to disagree, I think Jenna is trying her best considering she lost her sister and suddenly had two teenagers to raise while still being quite young herself and Charlie I really think is trying so hard to get to know Bella after all this time of her living with her mother and he wants to know her he’s just a bit out of practice and Bella doesn’t seem to want to know him. That said, it’s still a similarity.

14. Bland main characters:

Whoops sorry! But as you’ll see in an upcoming post I am writing (subscribe down below to be notified when it is up), I have an issue with Elena. I find Elena incredibly bland and boring basically until she becomes a Vampire but even then I don’t like her. She is so average in every way except that she’s the Doppelganger. Same with Bella, Bella Swan is so boring of a character to watch, she has no personality in the first film, she’s a terrible friend and she’s just plain.

Bella’s a suffer in silence type, how brooding

15. The very hot and cold romance where honestly Edward and Stefan kinda treat Bella and Elena really terribly, you either like her or you don’t, you either want to stay away or you don’t.

16. Small town people and small town lives, both of which are surrounded by forest!Both of these are set in a small town despite the fact it’s probably far easier to fly under the radar if you’re surrounded by people. It’s easier to blend it when there’s thousands of people around you – although no animals to hunt.

17. “Animal attacks”, I guess that’s why we need to set these in wooded areas.

18. Car crash that didn’t kill our main girl – check

19. We have the boy who wants but just can’t have our main girl, I guess that makes Matt, Jacob. Or is Damon, the Jacob, hard to say. On this same point we have – Love triangle. Who doesn’t love a vampire love triangle?

20. Tad bit of gas-lighting to add to the mix is another similarity I can’t ignore.

21. Sports scene, admittedly a bit of a reach but, sports.

22. Lovely little cooking moment despite that vampires don’t need to eat human food.

And that is all the reasons I could find to justify the fact that the beginning of The Vampire Diaries is basically Twilight. Granted the two move sharply in different directions for the rest of their movies and seasons I still felt it was interesting to point out just how many similarities there are. I’m sure everyone could agree there being Vampires and Werewolves and a love triangle were clear similarities but I hope this has shone some light on some other similarities between these two book adaption YA medias.

Still, despite all this I do enjoy watching both Twilight and TVD and have the utmost respect for those involved in the creation of them for the joy they have been able to bring me over the years.

Thank you for reading, please comment any opinions or thoughts you have I’d love to hear them, don’t forget you can add your email at the bottom of the page or follow my Instagram @simplymythoughts_blog to find out when I post.

Simply My Thoughts

Where TV and one girl's opinion meet…