Tonight we'll be screening the Twilight movie for review on this blog. There may be a podcast/youtube, but I'm uncertain. It all depends on how funny we are.
Responses to this blog have been informative, but limited. If you are reading this, please let me know if there is continued interest in me continuing on through New Moon and the rest of the Twilight series? As one of my fellow booksellers mentioned to me, "It's all worth it for the train wreck of Breaking Dawn."
So please, drop me a note her to state your presence and interest. And indeed, thank you for reading.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
No Fucking Point (Chapters 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and Epilogue)
The journey. Our main character, especially in narrative fiction, undergoes a journey just like every hero in any story from Grecian epics to pop manga. These stories require five basic things, as described by Thomas C. Foster in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
First, there is the Quester. For Twilight, we have Bella. Lonely, anxious, emotionally handicapped and tragically clumsy. She is our heroine at the beginning of her path. Second, a place to go. The book opens with Bella arriving in Forks from Phoenix in order to make her home. So while the journey isn't necessarily one of distance, she is required to make her way in this new life. Third, a stated reason to go. Bella has plenty of these, generally all ejaculated from her martyr complex; preserve and protect her mother's happiness, take care of her father in his solitary life, and distantly to finish high school. Fourth, challenges and trials. Again the majority of these conflicts are born of Bella's own brainfarts and inability to socialize in any healthy way. Vampires are nearly secondary to this conflict, but are worth mentioning. In comparison to the living, the dead seem perfectly acceptable if not attractive. Bella is seduced by a different system of rules, a new way to be a victim. And finally, the fifth requirement, the real reason to go. This is always self-knowledge. Bella's social spasms and backwards romance should harshly, even dangerously reveal the her true self and allow her to understand that she has the choice to be strong, to be solitary, to be alive and moreover to be numbered among the actively living instead of patiently dying.
At the point I left us last, before a convenient antagonist showed up to shoehorn some conflict into the last third of the book, Bella was actively begging Edward to turn her into a vampire. Edwardlike any man, isn't ready for that kind of commitment with a girl he hasn't slept with doesn't want to take her oh-so fragile life away from her and pop her jugular cherry. But even when she agrees to stop hounding him to take her throatginity, Bella yearns for this eternal life of being a monster, albeit a beautiful and powerful monster with an undying hottie for a boyfriend. I read this and I see a young woman who wants to die before she even starts living. When the evilvamps blow in to murder her, she runs because she is told to. When the evilvamp finds a way to contact her, he tells her to ditch her vampire friends and come to him willingly, or he'll murder her mother. And you know what? She does.
Bella rejects every single life raft, every mote of human companionship and leadership, every instinct that encourages her to stand the fuck up for herself, and walks straight to her death.
I wanted that bitch to die nearly as much as she did.
If your reader's sensibilities aren't frothing as the mouth yet, let's continue through the climax! Meyer's evilvamp is … oh wait, she never describes him. I can't even remember his name. When Bella waltzes into her deathtrap, the bad guy can't even be given an interesting visualization or monologue. He merely threatens vaguely at the doom awaiting her mother. "Stuff will happen! There will be things! OoooooOOOOOooh!" Way to castrate your villains, Steph.
When it comes murderin' time, Evilvamp doesn't conceive of a terrifying test of her will or haunting series of questions like Anton Chuguhr in No Country for Old Men. He doesn't revel in her fear or debasement by threatening her with horrifying trauma and listening to her beg and weep, like the assassin in the book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. No pseudo-crucifixion like Fiore's in the Sailor Moon R Movie, no elaborate death trap the likes of any James Bond villain. The best he can do is a dance studio, a VCR and the Bobby Brown school of ho-slapping. Bella breaks her leg falling into mirrors, which may or may not be the bad guy's fault, and generally gets her ass kicked. Finally, he bites her hand to inject the excruciating vampire venom into her system.
Yes, her hand. Not her throat, not her breast, not the naughty femoral artery. Her dainty little hand. He can't even bite off a few of her fingers for good measure before Edward shows up and kills him OFF SCREEN.
Because the climax of this story isn't about the ignoramus telling it to us, it's the god of all things sexy and divine Edward deciding if he will test his own control by sucking the venom from her hand. (Her fucking hand? Really?!) If he fails, he drinks her dry and leaves her a a sad, deflated blow-up doll. Or he could wuss out and allow her three days of writhing agony before she dies and becomes a fellow vampire, just like she's been begging him all this time.
I … I can't even go on. We know what happens, despite how it should have happened. He saves her, she recovers and he fucking takes her to prom and they STILL DON'T HAVE SEX. The End. I hate you, Stephanie Meyer. Do us a favor and go eat a cannoli, fuck off and die in a fire. I loathe your book because it only teaches girls their value in is what they can sacrifice to others, specifically men, and should be thankful for what they get out of it. This is not love. This is systemic abusive control of women.
Twilight is trash beneath a sugary veneer masquerading as romance. I wouldn't use the paper to wipe my ass.
First, there is the Quester. For Twilight, we have Bella. Lonely, anxious, emotionally handicapped and tragically clumsy. She is our heroine at the beginning of her path. Second, a place to go. The book opens with Bella arriving in Forks from Phoenix in order to make her home. So while the journey isn't necessarily one of distance, she is required to make her way in this new life. Third, a stated reason to go. Bella has plenty of these, generally all ejaculated from her martyr complex; preserve and protect her mother's happiness, take care of her father in his solitary life, and distantly to finish high school. Fourth, challenges and trials. Again the majority of these conflicts are born of Bella's own brainfarts and inability to socialize in any healthy way. Vampires are nearly secondary to this conflict, but are worth mentioning. In comparison to the living, the dead seem perfectly acceptable if not attractive. Bella is seduced by a different system of rules, a new way to be a victim. And finally, the fifth requirement, the real reason to go. This is always self-knowledge. Bella's social spasms and backwards romance should harshly, even dangerously reveal the her true self and allow her to understand that she has the choice to be strong, to be solitary, to be alive and moreover to be numbered among the actively living instead of patiently dying.
At the point I left us last, before a convenient antagonist showed up to shoehorn some conflict into the last third of the book, Bella was actively begging Edward to turn her into a vampire. Edward
Bella rejects every single life raft, every mote of human companionship and leadership, every instinct that encourages her to stand the fuck up for herself, and walks straight to her death.
I wanted that bitch to die nearly as much as she did.
If your reader's sensibilities aren't frothing as the mouth yet, let's continue through the climax! Meyer's evilvamp is … oh wait, she never describes him. I can't even remember his name. When Bella waltzes into her deathtrap, the bad guy can't even be given an interesting visualization or monologue. He merely threatens vaguely at the doom awaiting her mother. "Stuff will happen! There will be things! OoooooOOOOOooh!" Way to castrate your villains, Steph.
When it comes murderin' time, Evilvamp doesn't conceive of a terrifying test of her will or haunting series of questions like Anton Chuguhr in No Country for Old Men. He doesn't revel in her fear or debasement by threatening her with horrifying trauma and listening to her beg and weep, like the assassin in the book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. No pseudo-crucifixion like Fiore's in the Sailor Moon R Movie, no elaborate death trap the likes of any James Bond villain. The best he can do is a dance studio, a VCR and the Bobby Brown school of ho-slapping. Bella breaks her leg falling into mirrors, which may or may not be the bad guy's fault, and generally gets her ass kicked. Finally, he bites her hand to inject the excruciating vampire venom into her system.
Yes, her hand. Not her throat, not her breast, not the naughty femoral artery. Her dainty little hand. He can't even bite off a few of her fingers for good measure before Edward shows up and kills him OFF SCREEN.
Because the climax of this story isn't about the ignoramus telling it to us, it's the god of all things sexy and divine Edward deciding if he will test his own control by sucking the venom from her hand. (Her fucking hand? Really?!) If he fails, he drinks her dry and leaves her a a sad, deflated blow-up doll. Or he could wuss out and allow her three days of writhing agony before she dies and becomes a fellow vampire, just like she's been begging him all this time.
I … I can't even go on. We know what happens, despite how it should have happened. He saves her, she recovers and he fucking takes her to prom and they STILL DON'T HAVE SEX. The End. I hate you, Stephanie Meyer. Do us a favor and go eat a cannoli, fuck off and die in a fire. I loathe your book because it only teaches girls their value in is what they can sacrifice to others, specifically men, and should be thankful for what they get out of it. This is not love. This is systemic abusive control of women.
Twilight is trash beneath a sugary veneer masquerading as romance. I wouldn't use the paper to wipe my ass.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Thinking About Baseball Won't Help (Chapters 17, 18 and 19)
Conflict. Without it, there is no reason to tell a story. Thus far in Twilight, we've had little genuine conflict other than Bella's paranoid anxiety that everyone BUT the vampires is out to get her. However, Chapter 17 unfurls an engaging background issue that deserves so much more attention than it gets. Even accepting that I as the reader haven't seen the trailers for New Moon and somehow escaped the inanity of Team Edward of the bloodsucker set verses Team Jacob the fuzzy and wolfish, the fact remains the Cullens brokered a peace treaty with the local Native Americas on the reservation in Forks a few generations ago. This means Jacob's father, Billy "Meals on Wheels" Black, not only knows the Cullens are vampires, but like his fathers before him, doesn't trust them any farther than he can throw them. The Indians clearly delineated their territory from the undead in exchange for not whistle-blowing and triggering a good old fashioned angry mob.
For years, the Cullens lived within Forks, but apart. Like any good recovering alcoholics, they know better than to hang out in the liquor store for any length of time. Now, the batshit crazy daughter of the white folk's police chief is dancing her seventeen year-old single malt self around one of the AA boys. Black knows it only takes one drink to drop the lot of them off the good vampire bandwagon. After that, it's on like Donkey Kong; wholesale hunting and murder, pitchfork and torch-wielding justice. I could see the younger generation of Native Ameriwolves going for it on the pretense of getting enemies to slaughter the white folk who took their land. But the older, wheelchair-bound ones know better than to invite the Feds to a situation, risking more land getting seized and the loss of all those handicap accessible places like Walmart and McDonalds.
This story here is interesting! But it's not the one that gets told. No, instead Bella comes home and finds Black and Jacob on her porch like cigar store Indians (in a wheelchair). Faced with the survival of his tribe, his land, and the white folk of Forks, Black approaches to give her the vaguest warning imaginable. Bella, like any brainless, romance-addicted ingenue, resists his advice and intimidates (??!!!) him and his son off her property. Really. When Charlie gets home, Bella fills her father's ears with lies and then introduces Edward. This scene too, promising all kinds of thematic elements, falls as flat as Calista Flockhart.
The book wholly limits itself with Bella's narrative. The stories I want to hear are bullied out of the way by the insipid, sexless romance. Where is the win here?
It bears mentioning that Meyer takes one last chance at givingEsmeDaphne a personality. Sometime during the next scene, Bella is approached by the motherly vampire, who tells her randomly that her baby died in childbirth and that's why she jumped off a cliff. I can totally see Jane Leeves doing this and owning every awkward moment. But just as I feared, vampire baseball is exactly as mind-numbing as major league baseball. Thank god the evil vampires show up. And, oh surprise! They want to eat Bella.
Bookwench: Oh hi, conflict! It's been so long since you've had a part to play in this rancid, sad sack of shit. Now that the three new evil vampires are here and plan on cracking the wax on Bella's single-malt, what are the other five good vampires going to do about it, on their home turf?
XTwyLyteRavynXFTW: OMGWTFBBQRUN!!!1one!!!1! lol
I once played in a table-top game called Slasher Flick in which the players are rewarded for actions that contribute to their characters dying; like fleeing up the stairs from the killer, or wandering off alone to take a shower. Seriously, even when the math changes and one of the evil vamps cuts his losses and bails, the Cullens decide splitting up and running with Bella for Phoenix is a good idea. Hunt in packs, jackasses! *hurls popcorn at the screen*
This plan requires Bella not only go home first to pack her belongings, (despite her lack of beloved mementos or vital possessions. There must be no Old Navy's in Phoenix,) but to convince Charlie she is leaving Forks for a benign reason, like hating her life and wanting tobe her own person without the constant fetters of familial duty and social martyrdom move back in with her mom. Every moment Bella lacks Edward's presence, she nics hardcore, which should make the moment she chooses to willingly hurt her father and call upon his memories of his wife's divorce to sell her intent, both riveting and heartbreaking.
Lacking that, at least it's brief.
The manly hunting team of Edward, Niles and Lion-O go to track down the evil vampire dude. Daphne and Lindsey Lohan go after the evil vampire dude's evil vampire bitchy girlfriend. And Bella flees with Moaning Myrtle and the Rock as they speed towards the safety of a sunny, desert city, four states away. Even driving at vampire speeds, a thousand miles is no short distance and stopping for road beers doesn't seem likely. Good thing they brought Bella.
For years, the Cullens lived within Forks, but apart. Like any good recovering alcoholics, they know better than to hang out in the liquor store for any length of time. Now, the batshit crazy daughter of the white folk's police chief is dancing her seventeen year-old single malt self around one of the AA boys. Black knows it only takes one drink to drop the lot of them off the good vampire bandwagon. After that, it's on like Donkey Kong; wholesale hunting and murder, pitchfork and torch-wielding justice. I could see the younger generation of Native Ameriwolves going for it on the pretense of getting enemies to slaughter the white folk who took their land. But the older, wheelchair-bound ones know better than to invite the Feds to a situation, risking more land getting seized and the loss of all those handicap accessible places like Walmart and McDonalds.
This story here is interesting! But it's not the one that gets told. No, instead Bella comes home and finds Black and Jacob on her porch like cigar store Indians (in a wheelchair). Faced with the survival of his tribe, his land, and the white folk of Forks, Black approaches to give her the vaguest warning imaginable. Bella, like any brainless, romance-addicted ingenue, resists his advice and intimidates (??!!!) him and his son off her property. Really. When Charlie gets home, Bella fills her father's ears with lies and then introduces Edward. This scene too, promising all kinds of thematic elements, falls as flat as Calista Flockhart.
The book wholly limits itself with Bella's narrative. The stories I want to hear are bullied out of the way by the insipid, sexless romance. Where is the win here?
It bears mentioning that Meyer takes one last chance at giving
Bookwench: Oh hi, conflict! It's been so long since you've had a part to play in this rancid, sad sack of shit. Now that the three new evil vampires are here and plan on cracking the wax on Bella's single-malt, what are the other five good vampires going to do about it, on their home turf?
XTwyLyteRavynXFTW: OMGWTFBBQRUN!!!1one!!!1! lol
I once played in a table-top game called Slasher Flick in which the players are rewarded for actions that contribute to their characters dying; like fleeing up the stairs from the killer, or wandering off alone to take a shower. Seriously, even when the math changes and one of the evil vamps cuts his losses and bails, the Cullens decide splitting up and running with Bella for Phoenix is a good idea. Hunt in packs, jackasses! *hurls popcorn at the screen*
This plan requires Bella not only go home first to pack her belongings, (despite her lack of beloved mementos or vital possessions. There must be no Old Navy's in Phoenix,) but to convince Charlie she is leaving Forks for a benign reason, like hating her life and wanting to
Lacking that, at least it's brief.
The manly hunting team of Edward, Niles and Lion-O go to track down the evil vampire dude. Daphne and Lindsey Lohan go after the evil vampire dude's evil vampire bitchy girlfriend. And Bella flees with Moaning Myrtle and the Rock as they speed towards the safety of a sunny, desert city, four states away. Even driving at vampire speeds, a thousand miles is no short distance and stopping for road beers doesn't seem likely. Good thing they brought Bella.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Lame Expectations (Chapters 14, 15 and 16)
I firmly believe that one's greatest weakness is also, in turn, one's greatest strength. This goes for vampire stories. Capturing an honest personality affected by decades upon decades of development proves a serious challenge. This crowns as the golden moment of awesome for the writer. Not only can one find the coolest stories in history to attribute to the beloved vampire, but it allows for period flashbacks and amusing colloquialisms to sneak into speech patterns. Impossible questions become endless opportunities; Edward lived through the roaring twenties, the great depression, two world wars, the rise of the atomic age, the British invasion on the music scene, the Civil Rights movement, Women's Liberation, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the rise of corporate greed and the fall of the Twin Towers. The passage of time and the frailty of life is no more distant from him than the lifeblood that rushes to his beloved Bella's face when she blushes beneath his gaze.
So what does Stephanie Meyer do?
If you guessed FAIL, you win a gold star.
On the way back from their unromantic romp in the forest, Edward rags on music not recorded in the 50's. Really. Keep in mind, he's still a violently disposed teenager who lectures Bella on her wisdom and then gets her alone in the forest for a chat. I feel my fanfic senses tingling here when the only creative works or artists mentioned in the Twilight universe are Wuthering Heights and Debussy. Even when Bella listens to the mix CD one of the Ron Weasly's made for her, there are no band names or song lyrics. Just noise.
Further, Meyer decides to introduce Edward's family to the reader without them actually being in the scene. So not only are we bereft of descriptions and body language to help us retain each individual character, there are five of them, we get to hear Edward's brief synopsis. I don't know who these fuckers are and am well beyond caring. Thing is, I'm nervous that it's going to be important to the remaining half of the book I have yet to sift through.
Edward doesn't sleep. And since he has no reason to break his regular habit of stalking Bella and watching her in bed, he doesn't. Bella spends the rest of the chapter spinning lies to her understandably untrusting father about why she's home, where she's been and why she isn't attending the socially acceptable school dance with the living. Once abed, she and Edward make with the cringe-worthy snuggles and our first bedroom scene closes as it opens; first base.
The next morning, Edward kisses Bella and she faints. All through this and the drive to meet his family, Bella fizzles and sparks in her addiction-fueled haze of frenetic mental gyration. Edward once mentioned that he can't read Bella's thought, and I believe this is due to the storm of interference clouding her synaptic actions from his vampESP. And fuckit, Edward taking Bella to meet is family is the equivalent of bringing a gigantic bottle of scotch into an AA meeting.
Since I'm failing so hard at keeping the individual vampire siblings straight, I will once again chose images from pop culture. Already, we have Dr. Carlisle Cullen played by Niles Crane. Let's just make his main squeeze Esme look like Daphne since she has no real defining character traits as it is. Next is Alice, the slightly batty seeress vampire with a pixie voice, as played by Shirley Henderson of Moaning Myrtle fame. (If you haven't seen her in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", then you must. Also Amy Adams runs around half naked a lot, which should be reason enough.) Jasper is described solely as "tall and leonine", so he's Lion-O. Rosalie was originally meant to be Edward's girl and is as such another catty bitch, so I'm leaning towards the soon-to-be incarcerated Lyndsey Lohan. Finally we have Emmett, cut like a cheese-grater and twice as shiny. Enter Dwayne Johnson's the Rock.
God grant this may give ease to the suffering that approaches; Vampire Baseball. As if Twilight needed to be any more boring.
So what does Stephanie Meyer do?
If you guessed FAIL, you win a gold star.
On the way back from their unromantic romp in the forest, Edward rags on music not recorded in the 50's. Really. Keep in mind, he's still a violently disposed teenager who lectures Bella on her wisdom and then gets her alone in the forest for a chat. I feel my fanfic senses tingling here when the only creative works or artists mentioned in the Twilight universe are Wuthering Heights and Debussy. Even when Bella listens to the mix CD one of the Ron Weasly's made for her, there are no band names or song lyrics. Just noise.
Further, Meyer decides to introduce Edward's family to the reader without them actually being in the scene. So not only are we bereft of descriptions and body language to help us retain each individual character, there are five of them, we get to hear Edward's brief synopsis. I don't know who these fuckers are and am well beyond caring. Thing is, I'm nervous that it's going to be important to the remaining half of the book I have yet to sift through.
Edward doesn't sleep. And since he has no reason to break his regular habit of stalking Bella and watching her in bed, he doesn't. Bella spends the rest of the chapter spinning lies to her understandably untrusting father about why she's home, where she's been and why she isn't attending the socially acceptable school dance with the living. Once abed, she and Edward make with the cringe-worthy snuggles and our first bedroom scene closes as it opens; first base.
The next morning, Edward kisses Bella and she faints. All through this and the drive to meet his family, Bella fizzles and sparks in her addiction-fueled haze of frenetic mental gyration. Edward once mentioned that he can't read Bella's thought, and I believe this is due to the storm of interference clouding her synaptic actions from his vampESP. And fuckit, Edward taking Bella to meet is family is the equivalent of bringing a gigantic bottle of scotch into an AA meeting.
Since I'm failing so hard at keeping the individual vampire siblings straight, I will once again chose images from pop culture. Already, we have Dr. Carlisle Cullen played by Niles Crane. Let's just make his main squeeze Esme look like Daphne since she has no real defining character traits as it is. Next is Alice, the slightly batty seeress vampire with a pixie voice, as played by Shirley Henderson of Moaning Myrtle fame. (If you haven't seen her in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", then you must. Also Amy Adams runs around half naked a lot, which should be reason enough.) Jasper is described solely as "tall and leonine", so he's Lion-O. Rosalie was originally meant to be Edward's girl and is as such another catty bitch, so I'm leaning towards the soon-to-be incarcerated Lyndsey Lohan. Finally we have Emmett, cut like a cheese-grater and twice as shiny. Enter Dwayne Johnson's the Rock.
God grant this may give ease to the suffering that approaches; Vampire Baseball. As if Twilight needed to be any more boring.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Hemorrhaging Interest (Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13)
In a concerted effort to complete this Twilight project before I must return my copy to Borders (or risk paying for it. God. No.) today's post covers the next four chapters. I hesitate to admit that the generally readability has increased with the acceleration of teasing romance. But this comes as further insult. Bella and Edward trade awkward banter while deviating heavily from their established characterization thus far. Body language is dominated by soggy descriptive contrivances centering on Edward's forehead; where he looks, how he frowns and what shade of caramel ripple his eyes are today. Essentially, this could represent the blossoming of true self in their shared moments, but I doubt that as much as I do BP's overall success in stopping the wholesale pollution of the ocean.
Bella and Edward start dating. This is an easy statement to make, but not so simple for Stephanie Meyer to write. Every attempt our lovers make at developing a shared understanding of each other is hijacked by neuroses. As if Bella weren't paranoid enough, Edward brings a litany of dangers to the table for her to be mindful of but must press Edward to explain. Unhelpfully, he pops each new horrific revelation about his vampirism up in the worst way imaginable without actually latching onto her throat. Despite his aching fear of hurting her, Edward seems to revel in his wicked if desultory details. It's like the bad boy who offers popcorn to his girlfriend at the movies, having secretly poked his penis through the bottom of the box. I can imagine Edward snickering when Bella grabs a handful of vampirecock and shrieks, glaring hotly when he points at her face and yells, “Gotcha!”
To sum up four chapters of dragging exposition, Edward has a mad, blood-fueled lust for Bella's brand of hemoglobin. In fact, he calls her his kind of heroin, which I cannot say is anything less than shit terrifying. The siren call of her pulmonary squeezins drove him nucking futz since she moved into his town. Edward admits to bailing off-screen, lighting off to Alaska only to decide he's not a pussy and come back to face his desire, divide his vampire family, and date the battiest bitch in Forks. Nice move, dick.
Bella finds a curious strength in the face of all this that I can only assume is her backwards mental programming suffering a fatal error and crashing her entire nervous system. Coasting in safe mode, Bella calmly weathers each and every one of Edward's emo-paroxysms and tempter tantrums. In her few opportunities to be away from him, she proceeds along the familiar tropes of losing her shit over tiny things and analyzing Edward, her father, her friends, and Jacob (given too brief a scene to preserve anything else but a place in the sequel,) and their motivations so furiously she must drug herself with cold medicine in order to sleep.
Yes, that just happened.
Our last chapter opens with the revelation of the oft-mocked "sparkle vampire" effect, accelerates with a display of Edward's strength, speed and
assholishness as he taunts Bella with how helpless she is against him, and culminates with their first kiss. It is by no means epic, save for the fact Bella's babymaker kick starts and initiates the molesting sequence and Edward is forced to stop her.
I hate this book. Perhaps, if it were a darkly romantic cautionary tale about the dangers of impressionable girls being seduced by mysterious, emotional and manipulative men, the latter represented metaphorically by the vampire concept, I might get be able to enjoy the sadistic resonance and ignore the crimes against narrative storytelling. But it isn't, and I can't. Edward is as seductive as a barnacle, reminding me too much of the bi-polar boy who confessed his devout adoration and proceeded to suck the life out me for for five years of marriage.
The same excitement I feel for the completion of my divorce rivals that of reaching the end of Twilight.
Bella and Edward start dating. This is an easy statement to make, but not so simple for Stephanie Meyer to write. Every attempt our lovers make at developing a shared understanding of each other is hijacked by neuroses. As if Bella weren't paranoid enough, Edward brings a litany of dangers to the table for her to be mindful of but must press Edward to explain. Unhelpfully, he pops each new horrific revelation about his vampirism up in the worst way imaginable without actually latching onto her throat. Despite his aching fear of hurting her, Edward seems to revel in his wicked if desultory details. It's like the bad boy who offers popcorn to his girlfriend at the movies, having secretly poked his penis through the bottom of the box. I can imagine Edward snickering when Bella grabs a handful of vampirecock and shrieks, glaring hotly when he points at her face and yells, “Gotcha!”
To sum up four chapters of dragging exposition, Edward has a mad, blood-fueled lust for Bella's brand of hemoglobin. In fact, he calls her his kind of heroin, which I cannot say is anything less than shit terrifying. The siren call of her pulmonary squeezins drove him nucking futz since she moved into his town. Edward admits to bailing off-screen, lighting off to Alaska only to decide he's not a pussy and come back to face his desire, divide his vampire family, and date the battiest bitch in Forks. Nice move, dick.
Bella finds a curious strength in the face of all this that I can only assume is her backwards mental programming suffering a fatal error and crashing her entire nervous system. Coasting in safe mode, Bella calmly weathers each and every one of Edward's emo-paroxysms and tempter tantrums. In her few opportunities to be away from him, she proceeds along the familiar tropes of losing her shit over tiny things and analyzing Edward, her father, her friends, and Jacob (given too brief a scene to preserve anything else but a place in the sequel,) and their motivations so furiously she must drug herself with cold medicine in order to sleep.
Yes, that just happened.
Our last chapter opens with the revelation of the oft-mocked "sparkle vampire" effect, accelerates with a display of Edward's strength, speed and
assholishness as he taunts Bella with how helpless she is against him, and culminates with their first kiss. It is by no means epic, save for the fact Bella's babymaker kick starts and initiates the molesting sequence and Edward is forced to stop her.
I hate this book. Perhaps, if it were a darkly romantic cautionary tale about the dangers of impressionable girls being seduced by mysterious, emotional and manipulative men, the latter represented metaphorically by the vampire concept, I might get be able to enjoy the sadistic resonance and ignore the crimes against narrative storytelling. But it isn't, and I can't. Edward is as seductive as a barnacle, reminding me too much of the bi-polar boy who confessed his devout adoration and proceeded to suck the life out me for for five years of marriage.
The same excitement I feel for the completion of my divorce rivals that of reaching the end of Twilight.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
You Say Misanthropy, I Say Misogyny. (Chapters 8 and 9)
A solid third of the way through the book, Meyer is finally getting to the big revelation. And I don't care. I writhe with ambivalence. Sheer willpower alone keeps me on task to crack this damn book open, let alone choke down the fetid prose. I approach each pair of chapters like an amateur pornographer in her first film, filled with trepidation, nausea and shame.
This would be a better story if Edward were Batman.
So take the time to mentally adjust your filters, as I have in order to preserve sanity, and tune out Kurt Hummel in favor of Batman, as made popular in the mid-nineties Batman: The Animated Series, which I was in love with when I was Twilight's target audience. All of Edward's dialogue will now be read by Kevin Conroy's dark and midnight voice.
Chapter 8 takes us shopping with Bella and some "girls", out of town. She ditches them in order to spend a wandering hour of meditation on her insane fascination with Edward while trying to find a bookstore. Instead she wanders into a rape gang. Or perhaps just some boys. One can't be too sure. Either way, Bella readies her purse to bust some heads whenEdward's Volvothe Batmobile pulls a Tokyo drift and rescues her.
EdwardBatman is furious. So blinded by rage, he orders Bella to entertain him with inanities so his righteous indignation won't send him plowing down the quartet of wandering boys who showed interest in her. Finally, EdwardBatman forces his temper under control, and decides now is a good time to reveal his secret identity.
Okay, maybe Batman wouldn't do that. But for someone desperate to keep his vampirism a deep, dark secret, Edward drops the topic into Bella's lap like a freshly caught catfish and watches her squirm. Not only is he a bloodsucker, he can read minds, complain about how ironic it is that he can't read Bella's thoughts (lucky bastard) and drive recklessly over the speed limit.
That's the true crime in all this, that someone would be stuck as a whiny, insecure, hormonally imbalanced 17 year-old with psychic powers for all eternity.
I think the hipster vampirism is the cause for Edward's fascination with weak-willed women. He comes apart at the seams for the Victorian wilting flower act of Bella's, gratified and aroused by herdainty bound feetpropensity to faceplant. Bella expertly plays into this with a piece of sage wisdom she delivers about his patience.
“But you're not hungry now … I've noticed that people – men in particular – are crabbier when they're hungry.”
Because that's a conversation you want to start with someone who considers you a credible food source. "Oh, it's my fault he's crabby, I've haven't fed him. I'll just remove myself to the kitchen where I feel comfortable. Don't mind my small, womanly feet. They allow me to stand closer to the stove."
Loathe as I am to admit it, as a fan of romantic sequences and dramatic tension, I felt the singular pull of indulgent interest as Edward and Bella revealed their truths to each other, taking up solid and brave roles heretofore un-characterized in the book thus far. Thankfully, Chapter 9 closes as Bella returns home and reflects upon her conversation with a roundhouse to my feminist sensibilities.
“About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him – and I didn't know how potent that part might be – that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”
Oh, the battered woman's trifecta! Just swap out vampire for violent offender and you're set.
In closing, I would like to share a story one of my friends presented as his Facebook status today.
I'm an asshole? Ok so after small talk with the Taco Bell staff, a woman chimed in with, "My man punched me all over my FACE and broke my glasses." Another stranger added, "I hope he isn't a man anymore!" The woman, I swear to God said, "Nah, I'm still living with him." So I said, "Bet you'll have dinner ready tonight." as I received all kinds of dirty looks.
This would be a better story if Edward were Batman.
So take the time to mentally adjust your filters, as I have in order to preserve sanity, and tune out Kurt Hummel in favor of Batman, as made popular in the mid-nineties Batman: The Animated Series, which I was in love with when I was Twilight's target audience. All of Edward's dialogue will now be read by Kevin Conroy's dark and midnight voice.
Chapter 8 takes us shopping with Bella and some "girls", out of town. She ditches them in order to spend a wandering hour of meditation on her insane fascination with Edward while trying to find a bookstore. Instead she wanders into a rape gang. Or perhaps just some boys. One can't be too sure. Either way, Bella readies her purse to bust some heads when
Okay, maybe Batman wouldn't do that. But for someone desperate to keep his vampirism a deep, dark secret, Edward drops the topic into Bella's lap like a freshly caught catfish and watches her squirm. Not only is he a bloodsucker, he can read minds, complain about how ironic it is that he can't read Bella's thoughts (lucky bastard) and drive recklessly over the speed limit.
That's the true crime in all this, that someone would be stuck as a whiny, insecure, hormonally imbalanced 17 year-old with psychic powers for all eternity.
I think the hipster vampirism is the cause for Edward's fascination with weak-willed women. He comes apart at the seams for the Victorian wilting flower act of Bella's, gratified and aroused by her
“But you're not hungry now … I've noticed that people – men in particular – are crabbier when they're hungry.”
Because that's a conversation you want to start with someone who considers you a credible food source. "Oh, it's my fault he's crabby, I've haven't fed him. I'll just remove myself to the kitchen where I feel comfortable. Don't mind my small, womanly feet. They allow me to stand closer to the stove."
Loathe as I am to admit it, as a fan of romantic sequences and dramatic tension, I felt the singular pull of indulgent interest as Edward and Bella revealed their truths to each other, taking up solid and brave roles heretofore un-characterized in the book thus far. Thankfully, Chapter 9 closes as Bella returns home and reflects upon her conversation with a roundhouse to my feminist sensibilities.
“About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him – and I didn't know how potent that part might be – that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”
Oh, the battered woman's trifecta! Just swap out vampire for violent offender and you're set.
In closing, I would like to share a story one of my friends presented as his Facebook status today.
I'm an asshole? Ok so after small talk with the Taco Bell staff, a woman chimed in with, "My man punched me all over my FACE and broke my glasses." Another stranger added, "I hope he isn't a man anymore!" The woman, I swear to God said, "Nah, I'm still living with him." So I said, "Bet you'll have dinner ready tonight." as I received all kinds of dirty looks.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Holy Exposition, Wolfman! (Chapter 6 and 7)
Today's musical selection is another Lady Gaga, this time “Poker Face,” which I would prefer to do to Bella over the course of these next pair of chapters. At least I was granted a small reprieve in that Edward doesn't make an appearance once, despite being talked about enough to make even a vampire's ears burn.
We begin with another standard of fan-fiction; gender bias. As the lead and narrative voice of Twilight is female, any other characters who are not male will be described as negatively as possible, if at all, and are generalized as selfish, gossiping bitches. I've found this to be a popular choice in otherwise credible fiction, including the very adult, supernatural hackings of Laurell K. Hamilton. Just like little Bella, Hamilton's Anita Blake corners the market on “class and beauty,” with the other girlies can't even be relegated to rival status and instead grovel at the plot table for scraps of dialogue.
Today, the teenagers flock to the beach to socialize, Bella somehow numbered among them for no explicable reason. While awkwardly shooting down her prospects and obsessing over Edward, she meets Jacob, a fifteen year-old American Indian who is fated to doggy-bag Edward's sloppy seconds in the sequel. For now, he's underage despite a deceptively deep voice. (I spent my entire day trying to come up with a visual for Jacob that wouldn't be just another pretty face in a teen movie. Instead I actively failed and chose Steve Strait in his portrayal of Warren Peace from Sky High because he's panties-round-my-ankles hot.)
Someone drops the Cullen name, and Jacob's crew is just as visibly discomfited as I am. Curious and suddenly aware of her femininity, Bella decides to sweet-talk Jacob into telling her more about why Edward, ahem, sucks. However, during the whole adorable scene, she mentally flagellates her already bruised ego for being a liar and leading Jacob on.
Because goodMormons girls only flirt when they mean to marry. Thanks Stephanie Meyer.
Jacob doesn't smell the stank on this one and drops the entire plot on her. To make it even less important or foreshadowed, I'll sum up. Blah-blah-blah werewolves. Blah-blah-blah good vampires. Wanna go steady?
The nuclear fallout of feminine wiles and surprise Nosferatu torment Bella for the entirely of Chapter 7. She withdraws into noise and sensory overload, she is assailed by pointless nightmares, she wanders like an equally gravity-stricken Ophelia into the forest to finally face her fears and decide, once and for all, what she's going to do about Edward. Instead, she doesn't. Do. Anything. After pages upon pages of aching knots of Gordian heartstrings, Bella runs out of steam. The rest of the chapter meanders towards a close with a shopping trip with the placeholder girls that shivved their way to the top of the NPC heap.
Taking the perspective of a deeply affected girl stricken with crippling anxiety, intense paranoia and a shrinking violet cum martyr complex, I can't say I'm looking forward to the inevitable hook-up with the bi-polar bad boy wanna-be. Her first seemingly selfish act in the entire book is a choice to flirt with a guy she's not interested in to get information about the object of her slavish obsession. God may as well have lightning bolted her ass to spare her the guilt trip that followed. Top it all off with a Mormon writer and a pre-teen audience. This will be the sex of MPAA-approved legend.
And Laurell K. Hamilton cackles in her ivory tower, “Where's your iron willpower now, dearie? Anita fucked a leopard! HAHAHAHAH!”
Anne Rice slits her wrists in the only obvious recourse.
We begin with another standard of fan-fiction; gender bias. As the lead and narrative voice of Twilight is female, any other characters who are not male will be described as negatively as possible, if at all, and are generalized as selfish, gossiping bitches. I've found this to be a popular choice in otherwise credible fiction, including the very adult, supernatural hackings of Laurell K. Hamilton. Just like little Bella, Hamilton's Anita Blake corners the market on “class and beauty,” with the other girlies can't even be relegated to rival status and instead grovel at the plot table for scraps of dialogue.
Today, the teenagers flock to the beach to socialize, Bella somehow numbered among them for no explicable reason. While awkwardly shooting down her prospects and obsessing over Edward, she meets Jacob, a fifteen year-old American Indian who is fated to doggy-bag Edward's sloppy seconds in the sequel. For now, he's underage despite a deceptively deep voice. (I spent my entire day trying to come up with a visual for Jacob that wouldn't be just another pretty face in a teen movie. Instead I actively failed and chose Steve Strait in his portrayal of Warren Peace from Sky High because he's panties-round-my-ankles hot.)
Someone drops the Cullen name, and Jacob's crew is just as visibly discomfited as I am. Curious and suddenly aware of her femininity, Bella decides to sweet-talk Jacob into telling her more about why Edward, ahem, sucks. However, during the whole adorable scene, she mentally flagellates her already bruised ego for being a liar and leading Jacob on.
Because good
Jacob doesn't smell the stank on this one and drops the entire plot on her. To make it even less important or foreshadowed, I'll sum up. Blah-blah-blah werewolves. Blah-blah-blah good vampires. Wanna go steady?
The nuclear fallout of feminine wiles and surprise Nosferatu torment Bella for the entirely of Chapter 7. She withdraws into noise and sensory overload, she is assailed by pointless nightmares, she wanders like an equally gravity-stricken Ophelia into the forest to finally face her fears and decide, once and for all, what she's going to do about Edward. Instead, she doesn't. Do. Anything. After pages upon pages of aching knots of Gordian heartstrings, Bella runs out of steam. The rest of the chapter meanders towards a close with a shopping trip with the placeholder girls that shivved their way to the top of the NPC heap.
Taking the perspective of a deeply affected girl stricken with crippling anxiety, intense paranoia and a shrinking violet cum martyr complex, I can't say I'm looking forward to the inevitable hook-up with the bi-polar bad boy wanna-be. Her first seemingly selfish act in the entire book is a choice to flirt with a guy she's not interested in to get information about the object of her slavish obsession. God may as well have lightning bolted her ass to spare her the guilt trip that followed. Top it all off with a Mormon writer and a pre-teen audience. This will be the sex of MPAA-approved legend.
And Laurell K. Hamilton cackles in her ivory tower, “Where's your iron willpower now, dearie? Anita fucked a leopard! HAHAHAHAH!”
Anne Rice slits her wrists in the only obvious recourse.
Monday, July 12, 2010
There Might Be Blood (Chapters 4 and 5)
Fitting I would have Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance” stuck in my head.
Bella's recurring dream of Edward cops out immediately in the beginning of Chapter 4 without ever once delving into the unconscious mind of a girl so enamored with her martyr complex that she breaks into mental hives at the sudden attention of not one, not two, but three different boys at school. (I haven't bothered to choose images for them yet, as personality traits seem to be in short supply as a rule in Meyer's book. My go-to placeholder for non-Edward male characters is Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley.) But the random doesn't end there. Oh ho, no! Edward spends the next two chapters vacillating between ignoring the fuck out of our preternaturally clumsy heroine and making bi-polar overtures of friendship and sarcasm.
Because even the most mysterious of men don't know what the shit they are doing.
Bella wraps herself in a shroud of lies to avoid attending the wholly anticipated school dance with any of the three boys of indeterminate characterization. Edward, tapping into the apparent hive mind of Forks, WA calls her on her bluff to ditch the dance for a day-trip to Seattle, and invites himself along as her chauffeur. He crooks a finger at lunch one day to summon her to his table, and then teeter-totters banal conversation that he might be dangerous, or maybe he's a bad guy, and that she would be better off avoiding his friendship. Not that its going to stop him, of course.
In response to this heady draught of crazy, our lady of the lame-ass constitution develops a second character trait and passes out at the sight of blood in biology class. One of her dutiful boys takes her to the nurse but is bullied away so Edward can swoop her up and gallantly force medical attention on her, mentally dominate the school administration into letting her leave early for the day, and then man-handle her through the pouring rain to his car with the threat that, even if she runs, he'll just drag her back. At one point he tells her she resembles a corpse. Judging by his seduction methods, he must think she's Courtney Love.
While I appreciate the attempt to inject vague horror themes and a sense of unease into overall storytelling atmosphere, Bella's narrative has been leadfooting the anxiety since page one. Thus, what could be a nuanced threat of the blood-sucking horrors to come is like watching the American version of “The Grudge.” No matter what scene you're in, something is going to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of you for no goddamn reason.
And because I can't have a post without openly mocking Meyer's prose, “Fainting spells always exhausted me.”
Yeah, well diarrhea gives me the runs.
Bella's recurring dream of Edward cops out immediately in the beginning of Chapter 4 without ever once delving into the unconscious mind of a girl so enamored with her martyr complex that she breaks into mental hives at the sudden attention of not one, not two, but three different boys at school. (I haven't bothered to choose images for them yet, as personality traits seem to be in short supply as a rule in Meyer's book. My go-to placeholder for non-Edward male characters is Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley.) But the random doesn't end there. Oh ho, no! Edward spends the next two chapters vacillating between ignoring the fuck out of our preternaturally clumsy heroine and making bi-polar overtures of friendship and sarcasm.
Because even the most mysterious of men don't know what the shit they are doing.
Bella wraps herself in a shroud of lies to avoid attending the wholly anticipated school dance with any of the three boys of indeterminate characterization. Edward, tapping into the apparent hive mind of Forks, WA calls her on her bluff to ditch the dance for a day-trip to Seattle, and invites himself along as her chauffeur. He crooks a finger at lunch one day to summon her to his table, and then teeter-totters banal conversation that he might be dangerous, or maybe he's a bad guy, and that she would be better off avoiding his friendship. Not that its going to stop him, of course.
In response to this heady draught of crazy, our lady of the lame-ass constitution develops a second character trait and passes out at the sight of blood in biology class. One of her dutiful boys takes her to the nurse but is bullied away so Edward can swoop her up and gallantly force medical attention on her, mentally dominate the school administration into letting her leave early for the day, and then man-handle her through the pouring rain to his car with the threat that, even if she runs, he'll just drag her back. At one point he tells her she resembles a corpse. Judging by his seduction methods, he must think she's Courtney Love.
While I appreciate the attempt to inject vague horror themes and a sense of unease into overall storytelling atmosphere, Bella's narrative has been leadfooting the anxiety since page one. Thus, what could be a nuanced threat of the blood-sucking horrors to come is like watching the American version of “The Grudge.” No matter what scene you're in, something is going to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of you for no goddamn reason.
And because I can't have a post without openly mocking Meyer's prose, “Fainting spells always exhausted me.”
Yeah, well diarrhea gives me the runs.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Put a Simile on Your Face (Chapters 2 and 3)
Refreshed from a night of theatre, (Rossum's Universal Robots at Insurgo) I returned to the abandoned second chapter of Twilight. While I fully expect the need to bookend my ventures into Meyer's two-dimensional world of tepid romance with actual storytelling will continue, it is increasingly unfair to my Twilight experience to see the contrast of wit and method to Meyer's excuse for prose.
Written in the 1920's, RUR originated the term "robot" in popular nomenclature and traces the doomed path of humanity as the mortal creators of life. I note this solely because in Karel Čapek's play, he resorts to the storytelling gimmick of characters as archetypes instead of actual people. In doing, he saves the stage time of developing his players and relies on the audience to accept each speaker as a general perspective to move his story. Twilight on the other hand utilizes stilted, unrealistic dialogue to fail at this.
Picking up in Chapter 2, Bella and Edward have their first real conversation in biology class. To the backdrop of examining onion root cells beneath a microscope, Bella finds herself inexplicably opening up to the suddenly convivial Edward. Allow me to compare this properly. Romeo and Juliet traded their first flirtatious banter at the Capulet mansion in the confusion of her parent's party; an expression of civility and hospitality that would not be shown to their union or love. The canon of Notre Dame hired renowned philosopher Peter Abelard to tutor his daughter Heloise at the esteemed church in France; when their love was discovered, she was whisked off to a convent while Abelard was unmanned and spent his life as a monk. Marie and Pierre Curie met at one of the laboratories Pierre worked for while Marie was studying at the Sorbonne and their dedication to science would both define and end their life-long love. Fucking Han Solo meets Princess Leia while rescuing her from the goddamn Death Star; the death mask of Darth Vadar and the promise of world-breaking domination always present int their burgeoning love for the next two movies!
Edward met Bella while examining onion roots in biology class.
Really, Meyer? That's how this epic starts? You couldn't throw us a clever twist on frog dissection (like Spielberg did in E.T.) to show us the fragility of life, or discuss the qualities of white blood cells in protecting the body from invasion to counter the vampiric themes I'm hoping show up at some point, or the science of hormones in attracting a mate to contrast the undead Lothario making pee-yellow eyes at the lummox across from him?
I would like to say the mundane drivel that follows allows a break from my storyteller's rage, but the next scene has Bella's awkward and negative observations on seeing snow for the first time. She is judged harshly by the throng of youth engaging in snowball fights, like teenagers are wont to do with all those hormones stinking up the place. But wait? Didn't Bella grow up in Forks, Washington before her parents divorced? Unless Charlie kept her chained to a potty chair in the basement for the majority of her elementary years, the girl has seen snow before. Moreover, Chapter 3 has her driving in it. As a native to the inclement snowstorms of Ohio, I know for a fact that winter driving takes time to learn, let a lone in Bella's ancient Chevy truck her father bought her. (And while he chained her tires for her, he didn't sandbag the truck bed to allow for better traction, which is what real people do in wintry climes. Fuckyouverymuchstephaniemeyer.) The fan fic kicks into high gear when Bella neatly avoids being splattered by another car slipping on the ice.
Guess who rescues her? If you said Tuxedo Mask, you get my undying love. But no, it's just Edward.
In the flush of adrenaline that follows her near-death experience, Bella bitches that Edward was too far away to save her. On the goddamn icy road, she tells him his mortal limitations with the hand-print indentations in the car that would have made a more two-dimensional Bella than Meyer ever intended. Appropriately, he tells her to STFU. (Or in gamerspeak, "I just blew a blood point on celerity, bitch. Don't fuck this up for me.")
If Bella is in high school in early winter, and living with her father, then I assume she's a minor. If so, there is no goddamn reason in the world Charlie wouldn't be in the ER with her, and likely in a private room considering his status as Police Chief. But no, her observation is handled with Edward smirking at her side, the other driver with his inexplicably lacerated face, and Edward's father Dr. Cullen, who I immediately decided was David Hyde Pierce.
If you have a copy of Twilight, open it to Chapter 3 right now and read the dialogue in the hospital scene as if Kurt Hummel and Niles Crane were talking.
Now you know my joy. I'll pick up Bella's impending dream about Edward in Chapter 4 next time.
Written in the 1920's, RUR originated the term "robot" in popular nomenclature and traces the doomed path of humanity as the mortal creators of life. I note this solely because in Karel Čapek's play, he resorts to the storytelling gimmick of characters as archetypes instead of actual people. In doing, he saves the stage time of developing his players and relies on the audience to accept each speaker as a general perspective to move his story. Twilight on the other hand utilizes stilted, unrealistic dialogue to fail at this.
Picking up in Chapter 2, Bella and Edward have their first real conversation in biology class. To the backdrop of examining onion root cells beneath a microscope, Bella finds herself inexplicably opening up to the suddenly convivial Edward. Allow me to compare this properly. Romeo and Juliet traded their first flirtatious banter at the Capulet mansion in the confusion of her parent's party; an expression of civility and hospitality that would not be shown to their union or love. The canon of Notre Dame hired renowned philosopher Peter Abelard to tutor his daughter Heloise at the esteemed church in France; when their love was discovered, she was whisked off to a convent while Abelard was unmanned and spent his life as a monk. Marie and Pierre Curie met at one of the laboratories Pierre worked for while Marie was studying at the Sorbonne and their dedication to science would both define and end their life-long love. Fucking Han Solo meets Princess Leia while rescuing her from the goddamn Death Star; the death mask of Darth Vadar and the promise of world-breaking domination always present int their burgeoning love for the next two movies!
Edward met Bella while examining onion roots in biology class.
Really, Meyer? That's how this epic starts? You couldn't throw us a clever twist on frog dissection (like Spielberg did in E.T.) to show us the fragility of life, or discuss the qualities of white blood cells in protecting the body from invasion to counter the vampiric themes I'm hoping show up at some point, or the science of hormones in attracting a mate to contrast the undead Lothario making pee-yellow eyes at the lummox across from him?
I would like to say the mundane drivel that follows allows a break from my storyteller's rage, but the next scene has Bella's awkward and negative observations on seeing snow for the first time. She is judged harshly by the throng of youth engaging in snowball fights, like teenagers are wont to do with all those hormones stinking up the place. But wait? Didn't Bella grow up in Forks, Washington before her parents divorced? Unless Charlie kept her chained to a potty chair in the basement for the majority of her elementary years, the girl has seen snow before. Moreover, Chapter 3 has her driving in it. As a native to the inclement snowstorms of Ohio, I know for a fact that winter driving takes time to learn, let a lone in Bella's ancient Chevy truck her father bought her. (And while he chained her tires for her, he didn't sandbag the truck bed to allow for better traction, which is what real people do in wintry climes. Fuckyouverymuchstephaniemeyer.) The fan fic kicks into high gear when Bella neatly avoids being splattered by another car slipping on the ice.
Guess who rescues her? If you said Tuxedo Mask, you get my undying love. But no, it's just Edward.
In the flush of adrenaline that follows her near-death experience, Bella bitches that Edward was too far away to save her. On the goddamn icy road, she tells him his mortal limitations with the hand-print indentations in the car that would have made a more two-dimensional Bella than Meyer ever intended. Appropriately, he tells her to STFU. (Or in gamerspeak, "I just blew a blood point on celerity, bitch. Don't fuck this up for me.")
If Bella is in high school in early winter, and living with her father, then I assume she's a minor. If so, there is no goddamn reason in the world Charlie wouldn't be in the ER with her, and likely in a private room considering his status as Police Chief. But no, her observation is handled with Edward smirking at her side, the other driver with his inexplicably lacerated face, and Edward's father Dr. Cullen, who I immediately decided was David Hyde Pierce.
If you have a copy of Twilight, open it to Chapter 3 right now and read the dialogue in the hospital scene as if Kurt Hummel and Niles Crane were talking.
Now you know my joy. I'll pick up Bella's impending dream about Edward in Chapter 4 next time.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
First Flags (Chapters 1 and 2)
I've heard a lot of grousing about Meyer's Mormon leanings, and the opening splash page with a Genesis warning against the tree of knowledge of good and evil explains the apple cover image. This isn't enough to be an actual warning flag, but I'm paying attention for Ricean bemoaning of eternal knowledge and existence. No, the first flag waves tenderly in the preface with the following line during the appropriately vague perspective of someone's death.
“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to and end.”
Alongside Twilight, I'm reading Viktor Frankl's “Man's Search for Meaning,” which is dreadfully unfair to Ms. Meyer. But it struck me on page fucking one that if I found myself living a life more perfect and kick-ass than I ever imagined, I would sure as shit find it reasonable to mourn when it ended. This kind of phrase echoes from a pseudo-transcendent perspective popular among self-help gurus and cult leaders, and horribly romantic leads.
Thus my first mental error message flickered into being. Page. Fucking. One.
Chapter 1 introduces us to Bella, a bland heroine who is inexplicably distant to anyone she meets, paying lip service to social interaction while her hyperactive emotional sensitivity sends her in self-defeating spirals of teenaged angst over absolutely nothing. She is utterly misaligned with the universe. Friendless and awkward, Bella is fleeing a life of servitude to her dysfunctional mother, who I am assuming is a meth head or lapsed alcoholic. But upon arriving in her girlhood home in Forks, Washington, she tends to float about with no real attachment to her father, (a man she only refers to as “Charlie”,) or memories of growing up. From this, and her immediate decision to take up a domestic role for her father, I believe Bella is deeply emotionally stunted as a result of trauma in her childhood. My internal subtext decided that some uncle introduced her to “hide the pickle” early on, the fallout triggering the divorce and relocation to Arizona where her mother sought comfort at the bottom of a bottle. This would explain her lack of synchronization with her own body, resulting in her Sailor Moon level klutziness.
She meets the cool kids in high school. And by cool kids, I mean vampires. Meyer busts out the thesaurus for her adoration of brooding pretties, brought to penultimate perfection with Edward. Bella's spastic sense of self is only further maligned when Edward takes to a raging hate-on for her, furiously refusing to make eye contact to her as his lab partner and then arguing with the school administration to change classes to avoid her. Bella, heartbroken by childhood abuse and clinging to the role of caretaker in lieu of emotional connection to her family, processes Edward's actions as only she knows how; staggering gut-checks to her ego.
At this point I would like to pause and talk about visualization. When I read, I like to picture familiar faces to assist in remembering and savoring the story. For Twilight, I don't want to automatically use the actors from the movie. Thus I've decided that Bella is Michelle Trachtenberg from her first appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Post-Harriet the Spy, pre-Eurotrip (I judge myself for having seen the latter,) Michelle's role as the preteen Dawn is the Wesley Crusher of BTVS, allowing me to both appreciate and loathe her visually. For Edward, Meyer constantly describes him as the most boyish of the vamps. Now, I had a mad-on for Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but Robert Pattison is too stylishly handsome to be “boyish”. To make things interesting, I decided upon Chris Colfer, or Kurt Hummel from Glee. Immediately the role of Bella's father, Charlie, went to Kurt's dad Burt as played by Mike O'Malley.
Giggling at the thought of Kurt smooching on Dawn, I returned to Chapter 2 and ran head first into fan fiction. Now, way back in the first days of the internet, I furiously keyed a few indigo epics of my own. I can recognize at a glance when a storytelling corner barks the shins of reality. And nothing says “lack of actual research” like Bella utilizing her father's jar labeled “Food Money” in order to go grocery shopping. What? The fuck? I know Meyer wants to beat us to death with how devout her heroine is to servitude. But for fuck's sake, her father is a goddamn chief of police. He makes more money than any other civil servant in BFE, Washington and can't be bothered with direct deposit? No, the divorce left him so socially backward that his only means of self-preservation was to remind himself with labels of his need to exist, thus the “Food Money” stash in the cupboard. What's next, “Face, not Throat” labels for his razors? A “Shit Here” post-it over the toilet? This is the man who has his television set to automatically shut off at midnight so he remembers to climb into bed and cry himself to sleep. I fear for the people of Forks. But it sure does explain Bella's dissociative personality disorder.
I gave up about the point where Bella actually broaches conversation with her father, an act that could trigger the development of a relationship, and he fucking shuts her down for judging the Cullens. Way to go, dad. I'll pick up the rest of Chapter 2 in my next post.
“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to and end.”
Alongside Twilight, I'm reading Viktor Frankl's “Man's Search for Meaning,” which is dreadfully unfair to Ms. Meyer. But it struck me on page fucking one that if I found myself living a life more perfect and kick-ass than I ever imagined, I would sure as shit find it reasonable to mourn when it ended. This kind of phrase echoes from a pseudo-transcendent perspective popular among self-help gurus and cult leaders, and horribly romantic leads.
Thus my first mental error message flickered into being. Page. Fucking. One.
Chapter 1 introduces us to Bella, a bland heroine who is inexplicably distant to anyone she meets, paying lip service to social interaction while her hyperactive emotional sensitivity sends her in self-defeating spirals of teenaged angst over absolutely nothing. She is utterly misaligned with the universe. Friendless and awkward, Bella is fleeing a life of servitude to her dysfunctional mother, who I am assuming is a meth head or lapsed alcoholic. But upon arriving in her girlhood home in Forks, Washington, she tends to float about with no real attachment to her father, (a man she only refers to as “Charlie”,) or memories of growing up. From this, and her immediate decision to take up a domestic role for her father, I believe Bella is deeply emotionally stunted as a result of trauma in her childhood. My internal subtext decided that some uncle introduced her to “hide the pickle” early on, the fallout triggering the divorce and relocation to Arizona where her mother sought comfort at the bottom of a bottle. This would explain her lack of synchronization with her own body, resulting in her Sailor Moon level klutziness.
She meets the cool kids in high school. And by cool kids, I mean vampires. Meyer busts out the thesaurus for her adoration of brooding pretties, brought to penultimate perfection with Edward. Bella's spastic sense of self is only further maligned when Edward takes to a raging hate-on for her, furiously refusing to make eye contact to her as his lab partner and then arguing with the school administration to change classes to avoid her. Bella, heartbroken by childhood abuse and clinging to the role of caretaker in lieu of emotional connection to her family, processes Edward's actions as only she knows how; staggering gut-checks to her ego.
At this point I would like to pause and talk about visualization. When I read, I like to picture familiar faces to assist in remembering and savoring the story. For Twilight, I don't want to automatically use the actors from the movie. Thus I've decided that Bella is Michelle Trachtenberg from her first appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Post-Harriet the Spy, pre-Eurotrip (I judge myself for having seen the latter,) Michelle's role as the preteen Dawn is the Wesley Crusher of BTVS, allowing me to both appreciate and loathe her visually. For Edward, Meyer constantly describes him as the most boyish of the vamps. Now, I had a mad-on for Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but Robert Pattison is too stylishly handsome to be “boyish”. To make things interesting, I decided upon Chris Colfer, or Kurt Hummel from Glee. Immediately the role of Bella's father, Charlie, went to Kurt's dad Burt as played by Mike O'Malley.
Giggling at the thought of Kurt smooching on Dawn, I returned to Chapter 2 and ran head first into fan fiction. Now, way back in the first days of the internet, I furiously keyed a few indigo epics of my own. I can recognize at a glance when a storytelling corner barks the shins of reality. And nothing says “lack of actual research” like Bella utilizing her father's jar labeled “Food Money” in order to go grocery shopping. What? The fuck? I know Meyer wants to beat us to death with how devout her heroine is to servitude. But for fuck's sake, her father is a goddamn chief of police. He makes more money than any other civil servant in BFE, Washington and can't be bothered with direct deposit? No, the divorce left him so socially backward that his only means of self-preservation was to remind himself with labels of his need to exist, thus the “Food Money” stash in the cupboard. What's next, “Face, not Throat” labels for his razors? A “Shit Here” post-it over the toilet? This is the man who has his television set to automatically shut off at midnight so he remembers to climb into bed and cry himself to sleep. I fear for the people of Forks. But it sure does explain Bella's dissociative personality disorder.
I gave up about the point where Bella actually broaches conversation with her father, an act that could trigger the development of a relationship, and he fucking shuts her down for judging the Cullens. Way to go, dad. I'll pick up the rest of Chapter 2 in my next post.
Why Twilight?
As an educated woman over thirty, my romantic vampire phase peaked with Anne Rice back in high school, following bouts of swooning over Zorro, Star Trek and Batman. (Yes, I was an am one of those tragically nerdish girls galumphing along a wavelength completely other than popular culture and thus my peers. We can move on from the vague horror of high school now and back to the car wreck of fiction at hand.) I can even recall a horrid piece of writing I penned my junior year, telling the story of Raven and her great undead secret. (No tragically nerdish girl can avoid traipsing morosely into the gothic nor avoid head-on collision with purple prose. Or the name Raven.)
Eventually I found grateful surcease with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and steered out of ultimate Losertown and back onto my engeeked , awkward path. I openly mocked the goth scene that rose from the fringes of subculture and spasmed melancholy in the spotlight. The vampires I wrote were clever monsters, dark sidhe, and only ever attained heroic beauty when stricken with soul, (R&B or otherwise.)
Busily ensconced in adulthood, a crumbling marriage and Dungeons & Dragons, the Twilight phenomena whooshed passed me completely. All I recall of the brief encounter with the trailer for the first movie was a sense of generalized confusion as to which one of the leads was the vampire, and why they were cavorting about in daylight. I'm going to call this the first warning flag, which I as an obedient nerdish girl dutifully obeyed and avoided the hell out of the movie and books.
Flash forward to 2010 and the end of my marriage, joyful if exhausting relocation to Las Vegas and brand new job as a bookseller at Borders, and I am choking on fucking Twilight. I can't sell anything without one of my beloved, crazy patrons trying to hook me on Meyer's books. And when a surge of potential sales floats beyond me because I don't know who the hell Bree Tanner is and why her novella should be a part of anyone's Twilight collection, the problem, dear reader, is not in the movie stars, but in myself.
Last night I brought home a copy of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight with the intention of learning the truth; is her storytelling atrocious? Is this version of the vampire myth any more bastardized and hackneyed than Rice or White Wolf? Am I justified in judging the series that is bringing more and more young readers into my bookstore the way Rowling did in the previous decade?
Come with me and follow my journey into Twilight.
Eventually I found grateful surcease with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and steered out of ultimate Losertown and back onto my engeeked , awkward path. I openly mocked the goth scene that rose from the fringes of subculture and spasmed melancholy in the spotlight. The vampires I wrote were clever monsters, dark sidhe, and only ever attained heroic beauty when stricken with soul, (R&B or otherwise.)
Busily ensconced in adulthood, a crumbling marriage and Dungeons & Dragons, the Twilight phenomena whooshed passed me completely. All I recall of the brief encounter with the trailer for the first movie was a sense of generalized confusion as to which one of the leads was the vampire, and why they were cavorting about in daylight. I'm going to call this the first warning flag, which I as an obedient nerdish girl dutifully obeyed and avoided the hell out of the movie and books.
Flash forward to 2010 and the end of my marriage, joyful if exhausting relocation to Las Vegas and brand new job as a bookseller at Borders, and I am choking on fucking Twilight. I can't sell anything without one of my beloved, crazy patrons trying to hook me on Meyer's books. And when a surge of potential sales floats beyond me because I don't know who the hell Bree Tanner is and why her novella should be a part of anyone's Twilight collection, the problem, dear reader, is not in the movie stars, but in myself.
Last night I brought home a copy of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight with the intention of learning the truth; is her storytelling atrocious? Is this version of the vampire myth any more bastardized and hackneyed than Rice or White Wolf? Am I justified in judging the series that is bringing more and more young readers into my bookstore the way Rowling did in the previous decade?
Come with me and follow my journey into Twilight.
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