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.
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