Faking it: Chapters 20-24 and Epilogue

The first section of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love chronicles her adventures in Italy where she speaks Italian, eats herself out of shape and generally finds oneness amidst the ancient city of Rome and surrounding countryside. Having merely read those chapters and peeked at the Wikipedia article for Volterra, I already appear to know more than Meyer about Italy. For example, there is no such fucking thing as a vampire-themed festival of Saint Marcus. The use of it feels shoehorned into the dramatic backdrop for the sake of theme, a concession Meyer never bothered with in this or the last book before. Abruptly dragging the setting out of Washington and then not utilizing preexisting concepts in a nation known for political corruption, mafia strong-arming and one notable, failed attempt at Fascism, in favor of a make-believe vampparty is sadder than the allied bombing of abbey at Monte Cassino. Why not Rome, so close to the papal seat in Vatican City, thereby elaborating on Edward's fear of losing his soul and allowing the Volteri to exist like the worm in the apple of the holiest place on earth? Oh, because Meyer is a hack.

A constipated force of tension takes us into Chapter 20 as Bella elbows her way through the festival crowd to stop Edward from making his body-glitter appearance. Please remember that a lot of people are in costume for this shindig, up to and including plastic fangs. I don't know about you, but when I'm at this breed of goth party and someone shows up shirtless and shiny, I either a). Find the guy who slipped me a roofie, or b). Shrug it off as some sort of attention-getting costume and take of my shirt. (I might not glitter, but these nips are epic!) But this is Edward's emo brilliant plan to off himself. Bella clothelines herself on him and convinces him to hide back in shadow before the Volteri show up, which they do anyway.

Alice blows in just as the smack starts talking and the tension mounts before flagging suddenly when the hero of Canton, a man they call Jane arrives and they all blithely follow her into the sewers. A reason is given, eighteen pages later, that Jane's mental powers allow her to incite unfathomable pain upon anyone she looks at. But not for her boring-as-Mormon-missionary-position name. Meyer drops more description on the convoluted path to the Volteri throne room than on the rest of nation of Italy because clearly it isn't interesting enough to note. Further, Bella's whining narrative kicks up to grate nails down my mental chalkboard. Her greatest concern as the mysterious vampires escort them deeper and deeper into their clutches? Whether or not Edward still wants her or is protecting her out of a sense guilt.

No fair. Vampires can't read her mind but I HAVE TO!

Shit happens in the court of the Volteri, but it lacks any substance, depth, genuine tension or style. For your sake, pick up any Anne Rice book, (they lack real difference between them, so whatever,) and insert any sequence where a group of vampires meet and greet (and eat), and you'll be better off. For kicks, try this with any Laurell K. Hamilton book and maybe take a bold hit off your bong and actually have a good time. In the end, the vamps decree that Bella is neat because her brain chatter interferes with all vampire powers, rendering her immune. Further, she knows too much about vamps to live, so either she stays in Volterra or the Cullens make her a vampire. Vegi-vamps says "Okiedokie" and bail.

Major emotional upsets and character conflicts snare and tangle within the last two chapters. Instead of addressing this, Bella and Edward snuggle and don't resolve anything between them for the next ... (flips pages) entire chapter. Instead we once again are treated to two ginormous flights back to Washington and don't make with any dialogue until getting to Charlie's doorstep. Given Meyer's habit of nuking her own pacing by sending characters fleeing over long distances, first to Phoenix, now to Italy, I expect the next book involves a rocket ship.

The rest of the book is a downhill shit-slide. At the poopie end, the Cullens vote to make Bella a vampire on Edward's timetable, Bella is grounded as fuck but still gets to date Edward, and Jacob tries to sell her down the river but opts for a cease-fire because he wuvs her so much. Edward proposes and in the most offensive move to date, Bella rejects the idea of marriage so young (despite desperately flinging herself at his fangs to be made his vampy mistress) and further bemoans the idea of waiting for either of these until she's thirty because that's fucking ancient. To an 18 year-old, yes, but fuck you Bella!

To summarize New Moon, Edward dumps Bella, she writhes in mental anguish and fails to rebound, some stuff with Italy and vampires, Edward and Bella get engaged, and Jacob is thrown over faster than U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker could overturn Proposition 8. Insert witty joke about Team Jacob the underdog here, because I'd rather be drinking.

Exeunt with Hautboys: Chapters 15-19

Let's take stock here of actual threats in the Twilight series thus far.

In the last book, three evilvamps showed up. One of them tried to eat Bella and was squished by the Cullens. The second, Laurent, bailed in the first book but returned in the second to track Bella and down and reveal the last vamp, Victoria, is plotting a grand, bloody revenge against Bella for the death of her mate by the Cullens, (read: above squished.) Then the wolves descended and tore the shit out of him. This leaves one vampire. Just one.

Five werewolves, and arguably an entire tribe of Quileute Indians, verses one vampire with a solitary goal of rendering Bella into a smear and an afterthought. (Bravo, lass!) Why are Meyer's supernatural entities so full of strategy fail? Why must they always split up to go hunting away from their places of safety and numbers and their quarry's singular goal? If the Cullens could count on their fingers with any accuracy in the last book, these vamplings would never be an issue. But no. The werewolves scatter to track Victoria and leave Bella to wander into danger around the homestead with only a handicapable babysitter.

In Chapter 15, Bella's near-death experience comes not at the hands of Victoria, nor from the quintet of newbie werewolves guarding her. Told to remain safely in La Push, Bella decides she needs her hallucinatory Edward fix and jumps off a cliff.

I've argued long and loud that the single most terrible aspect of the Twilight series is the protagonist and narrative voice of Bella. And now I must make it official. Bella is the only real antagonist in these stories of whiny teenager verses self. Again, if this were a complicated cautionary tale about the sexualization of young girls in modern society, even with the Mormon undertones, I would appreciate it. In Joan Jacobs Brumberg's The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, the author discusses the risk of today's feminine youth acting without the protective if prohibitive moral guidelines and supervision once provided by previous generations, and the danger of sexuality introduced to girls lacking the emotional maturity to handle it. Put a pretty vampire face on the preying media trying to sell an adult and idealized body image to teenagers, and you have Twilight: the Sensemaking, the most romantic after-school special ever.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws here. But I can't accept Meyer's books at face value because they suck donkey balls. There must be an undertone, a deep, baseline of theme I'm not grokking. I must justify the attention I'm throwing into this trash in some means or I'm left with only my literary rage to keep me warm against the long stretch of wintry night the next two (plus one novella) books promise.

That or else I'll begin hallucinating Joss Whedon's cautionary snarl, "Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion." and "Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."

Oh, Joss! I'm so lost without you. *sniffle*

Right, Bella tosses herself off a cliff, nearly drowns, and her ass gets rescued by Jacob. During her recovery, she undergoes a complicated analysis of Shakespeare, focusing on Paris from Romeo and Juliet, and trying to determine if Romeo dumped his rebound Capulet for Rosalind, would Juliet shack up with Paris. The answer is a resounding I DON'T FUCKING CARE! Yeah, we get it. Jacob isn't your first greatest love. But you should grow a spine and try to move on and be happy because that's life and it only gets worse, so find the fuzzy that makes you happy and fuck it relentlessly.

Also, if Jules hadn't taken vows with Romeo, I do see her retreating back into the safety of her family and marrying Paris, hating Montagues, and raising the next generation of Verona gang bangers. Romeo would trip from one emotional high to the next until he finally shacks up with Mercutio and finds true slashy love. And then gets killed by Verona gang bangers. Jerk.

Bella can't make a decision, even when Jacob gives up on gentle reasoning and takes a page from the previous book and goes for the sweeping emotional gesture and tries to kiss her. They are predictably fashionably interrupted by the appearance of Alice Cullen. Why Jacob doesn't lay into that one out of spite and claim his vacillating bride, I don't know. But he leaves so Alice can roll out the plot contrivance of the book. Her visions showed Bella leaping off a cliff but nothing else. Instead of keeping this to herself, she tells Rosalie who then tattles to Edward, who takes his Claudio act further and not only claims responsibility for Hero's Bella's death, but decides he too must die.

The audience goes wild.

For some reason, Bella decides she has to stop this shit, so the "snapping narrative" is reduced to a crawl to accommodate a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy. Why? Because instead of waltzing back to Forks and throwing himself to the very capable wolves in a thematic display of contrition for Bella's death, Edward jaunts off to beg death at the hands of the only (other) vampire family in the world, the Volturi. The who? Yeah, they got some mention in Twilight in a conversation better suited for making out. Chapter 19 ends with her and Alice and a stolen car arriving in Volterra, just before the strike of noon when Edward plans on outing himself to the crowd and forcing the Volturi to end him.

Gee, I wonder if she'll make it on time?

Flat tire! Flat tire! Flat tire!

Don't Angst So Close to Me: Chapters 9-14

I will say this for Bella. She gets shit on by men a lot.

All this quality time with Jacob not only mends Bella's broken heart, but incites guilt. Like any teenager who has never been in love, Bella assumes her emotional baggage is some form of lifelong curse and actively refers to herself as "damaged goods." I did this when I was sixteen. I couldn't tell you why. Her habit of mental flagellation continues, now focusing on her sin of feeling better about her life and being with a boy. Even her recurring, wake-up-screaming nightmares of loss persist like they did for every gothy heroine I wrote while I was “damaged goods”. (Her name was Raven. Always.)

During a woefully contrived group date, Jacob decides BFFing doesn't help sling the man meat and tells Bella how he feels. She turns him down and he doesn't mind. In fact, he promises not to stop hounding after her sweet, skinny, white ass and in fact swears he will resolutely defend her for evarz. Then he stops returning her calls. Big shocker.

Bella convinces herself he's been brainwashed instead of chasing more accessible tail. In a fit of neuroses she decides to secretly confront him. (Hooray for caution!) Before leaving, Charlie makes her swear she won't go anywhere near the forest, since people are being eaten by bears near daily. She promptly wanders out into the woods and trips over one of the evil vamps from the last book. Bella would find good work in slasher flicks.

A bunch of ginormous wolves chase the evilvamp off before he can sink fang into her. Every time Bella does something stupid that leaves her exposed, shit happens. Edward accused her of this in the first book. I thought he was being cute. No, it's a staple of the Twilight experience; stupid Bella tricks. If this were a tabletop RPG, Bella's player would roll straight 1's for Wisdom checks. I haven't seen a character lead into rape-able situations by the plot so overtly since Dragon Pink. (Mostly because I'm behind on my H.)

Bella finally catches up with Jacob and finds out he's a werewolf and he wasn't dissing her because she wouldn't put out. No, really. And now that she's got the skinny on the local vampire issues, she's part of the wolfgang.

… teehee!

Old Ass-Hat, New Moon: Chapters 1-8

I apologize for the delay in jumping back into the Approaching Twilight project. But one must cleanse one's creative palate. I did so by diving into the multitudinous oeuvre represented in the Borders in-store catalogue; Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, Scott Pilgrim vs the World vol. 1-3 by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and the previously pimped How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. Thus armed with my memory of quality prose and creative amusement, I sallied forth into the sequel, New Moon.

Keeping with previously established form, Meyer fails to write an introduction that gives a damn about the rest of the book. Chapter 1 reacquaints the reader with the droll, nails-on-chalkboard narrative voice of Bella and her addiction to her martyrdom, angst and demigodboyfriend. She suffers a nightmare in which Edward macks on an ancient version of herself and proceeds to fixate upon her eighteenth birthday as some form of rite of passage into old age. While a coming-of-age story would inject some literary credence to Meyer's storytelling, this lasts long enough for Bella to selfishly spazz on anyone who tries to celebrate her birthday, because being shown attention and affection when one reaches legal age is horrible!

I hate Bella.

At least the awkward birthday party at the Cullen's ends with bloodshed. Jasper, the newest recruit to vegi-vamp central, loses his shit when Bella slices her hand open on a papercut and winds up at the bottom of a WASPy dogpile. Bella flings herself into a glass table and gets stitched and preached by Doc Cullen while the others cover their mouths and noses as if Bella were a walking pile of sun-rotted diapers. (I feel this way a lot, too.) Despite all this, Bella continues to beg Edward to make her a bloodsucker so she won't have to grow old while he remains Highlander-hot and young. His response to this? Dump the bitch.

Hooray for Edward.

What follows is a surprisingly clever piece of presentation. After the initial crisis of Edward leaving her and Bella wandering Ophelia-like until being rescued, the chapter ends and the next page reads October. Turning, the next reads November, the next December, with the story not picking up until January. I liked this a lot. As someone who has survived a crisis so life-churning that reality fades into gray for months at a time, this resonates honestly.

Of course, then the story picks back up and sucks on down the block.

Chapter 4 begins with Bella's father Charlie threatening to ship Bella back to her mother in Florida, because that's how he shows he cares. Bella's autopilot begins to waver when she hallucinates Edward's voice when she waltzes into potentially dangerous situations. Clamoring for her fix, Bella flings herself into ever more dangerous situations, heedless and selfless until she discovers the true meaning of the life she so callously tried to spend on Edward carefully crafts a plan of reckless behavior so no one will notice. That's exactly how a closeted, martyr-prone teenager acts when she finally rebels. With caution.

However, as previous stated in plot-contrivance-land, her antics do fling her at rebound-boy Jacob who is more than happy to indulge her not-so wild behavior. While inching forward in her mad-cap race for Edwardian reminders, Bella starts living.

And as someone dragged along behind this train wreck of adolescence like a Pekingese tethered to a mobile home, I'm gladdened by the smoother path Bella takes up. She's proactively chasing down her future, hanging out with a living boy who likes her because she's a girl and not forbidden fruit, and recovering her solidarity a piece at a time from the shards of heartbreak.

Good for you, baby. Try not to fuck it up like you do.

Twilight, movie review

My overall reaction to the Twilight movie does not deviate overmuch from that of the book, with the notable exception of exemplary creative collaboration. Coming from a theatrical background, I appreciate the artistic process that occurs when a team of creative professionals throw down with a vision, a budget and a deadline. If one could excuse the source material entirely for the crimes against storytelling, Twilight on film is a satisfying experience. Grand cuts are taken to the dialogue and entire scenes are either tightly edited or excised entirely, leaving us with a rush of first romance beneath the stain of horror. The performers brought qualities to the characters left bereft in written form and made them memorable and sympathetic. Only the special effects marred what otherwise defied my expectations as a quality adaptation to a shitty book.

Still, the tale of a neurotic teenager hooking up with a castrated vampire in the first glimmers of hormone-fevered romance incites bowel obstructing, head-desking, loathsome revulsion in me. No amount of honest body language and heroic hair product could distract me from the kitten-weak premise and insomnia-curing plot. The filmmakers solve the problem of pointlessness until the third act by introducing the evil vampires early and spinning the romance under a constant threat of actual vampires. This validates Edward's genuine fear that his animalistic infatuation with Bella will override his willpower and destroy her, and he will love every minute. Robert Pattison's performance wholly reads as something not human, desperately wrestling with his identity as a monster. Meanwhile, Bella's selfishness in the face of reality softens to the mildly offensive behavior of an emotionally needy teenage girl. I still wished an endless deluge of bus collisions to her person, of course.

The small town feel of Forks, WA flagged in the face of metro-students and calculated racial diversity. Swap any tired high school lunchroom or prom sequence with Twilight's and try hard to notice. But mad props go to any movie that features music by Muse, even if it must accompany a baseball sequence. Special effects jarred the overall pleasant visual style with awkward and goofy movement. Popular panned vamp-sparkle looked more infected than exotic, but the golden lens flare carried the halo image convincingly.

I still hated it.

My favorite riff during my drunken tirade in viewing was at the end. “What, is Edward going to go flinging himself out of his backseat later? It is prom.”

Miscellany

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.

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. Edward like 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.