The supposed big "triumph" of the series for Bella occurs when she is able to use her power to shield everybody on their side, not that she even needed to, but she does. Ok, so the volturi gathered an army to take out the Cullen's because they made a new vampire baby. For hundreds of years, it was presumed impossible for a vampire and a human to reproduce, the reason given is that when you become a vampire, your body stops changing, so women stop getting their periods. Yet somehow, Edward is still able to produce viable sperm. I'm going to assume stephenie Meyer failed 7th grade health class. So I guess it's ok to make new vampires but not if they are children. The lover of one of the vampires they killed in the last boom gets a look at Bella and renesmee and zips off to snitch on them. As usual, people act on assumptions in this story and no one ever gets a chance to explain, which is just bad plotting and stupid motivation.
At last, Alice, Bella's sister in law who had left without explanation earlier in the book, returns with the members of a Brazilian family who Bella and Edward encountered on their honeymoon, as living proof that other vampire-human hybrids exist. This defuses the entire conflict and everybody goes home without suffering any casualties. Anticlimactic, sure, but at this point you'd be foolish to expect any kind of satisfying resolution. Predictably, Jacob imprints on renesmee, thereby resolving the love triangle that wasn't. With a hint of furthering the story somewhere in the future, this heinous shit is over. Here are some notes about the series as a whole:
- getting back to what I started complaining about earlier: the biggest problem with this series is that none of the characters have any sort of existence that doesn't revolve around serving the protagonist. Alice is a perfect example -- when the plot is not requiring her to use her iffy psychic powers, all she ever does is go on shopping sprees for Bella and execute elaborate plans for her prom and wedding. Are we ever given a real reason why she should care so much? Of course not. Even the characters that dislike Bella are given only the defining character trait of "doesn't like Bella." One way or another, she's the center of the universe at all times. This ties right into my theory that these books are pitched directly at girls who hate themselves.
- how much do I regret reading these books? There were a few moments that didn't absolutely make me curse my own literacy. The sections from Jacobs pov are at least not from Bella's, though still not good. The parts dealing with sex were hilarious in a bad way. Any part where Bella was in physical pain felt sweetly cathartic. But other than that, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything positive to say about any of these books. They are empty stories full of bad prose and nothing else.
- I remain solidly on Team Jacob, not just because he has the coolest name ever. Edward is just way too much of a doormat to Bella and a boring person with no interests other than his girlfriend. In real life, girls hate guys like that. At least Jacob has a life outside of inexplicably crushing on the least desirable protagonist ever put on paper. Plus, I bet he could kick Edwards ass.
- why did I read this again? Obviously, so I could blog about it. But really, I just run low on interests sometimes and give in to ill-conceived impulses. Hopefully it doesn't happen again.
- overall, my biggest complain about these books is the lack of a scene where Jacob attempts to seduce Bella by singing a rendition of "hungry like the wolf". What the hell, stephenie Meyer?
- stephenie Meyer is a Mormon, and a strange, strange woman if her writing is any indication. Se is terrified of sex but wallows in romance to a sickening degree. She demonstrates no understanding of pacing or plotting or character development. She cribs ideas liberally from Marvel comics. And she is the best-selling author of all time, in spite of it all. My hat is off.
Now, who wants to see me read Fifty Shades of Grey?
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Breaking dawn + reflection
This will be a multi-part post because im writing it on an ipad, which is a stupid machine that limits how long your posts can be.
The asinine final chapter of twilight concerns the birth of Edward and Bella's child, an ultimate showdown of vampires that amounts to nothing, and way too much stupid description about Bella becoming a vampire. I'm gonna blow through the plot here so's I can commence to bitching about the book sooner.
There's a wedding, blah blah blah, they go to brazil for their honeymoon and Bella gets knocked up right away. The way this book deals with sex is one of the most laughable things about it. The morning after their wedding night, Bella wakes up and finds herself covered in feathers because Edward had to bite the pillow to keep from totally destroying Bella's vagina. First of all, wow, real subtle there. Second, it is obvious to me that stephenie meyer is not at all familiar with the term "pillow biter" or it's attendant connotations. If you are unfamiliar, go watch waiting for Guffman, or just think about it logically for two seconds. It's hilarious, that you would spend three books building this man up as the most amazing specimen of masculinity, then as soon as he hits the sheets you unintentionally tag him with the derisive term for a gay bottom. And yes, i have now taken to referring to stephenie meyer in the second person. That is how damaging these books have been to my world.
As far as I can tell, Edward and Bella manage to have sex exactly twice before her pregnancy starts causing such horrific complications she needs to be bedridden. See, after the first time, Edward has all the pangs of guilt over it because... She had bruises on her thighs afterward. Yeah. Apparently during his 150 years on earth, nobody ever told him there are other positions than just pounding away at some chicks open legs. Also, bruises means you got off easy, sweetheart. So anyway, the pregnancy absolutely rips Bella a new one. She can't keep anything down, the baby kicks her so hard it breaks her ribs, etc. this part of the book is actually kinda fun, seeing Bella finally, finally suffer as bad as she has deserved to all this time. Unfortunately, we are cheated out of experiencing it through her pov because the narration abruptly shifts to Jacob at this point, for no reason. Hey, I'll take any respite from the tortured prose of Bellas pov, but you'd think the one time it'd be important to be in the characters head is during the most horrendously painful experience of her life. But that's stephenie Meyer for you, the woman who has deomnstrated over and over that she doesn't understand how literature works.
So after something like 2 months of pregnancy, the baby comes, snaps her spine in half, and Edward has no choice but to turn her into a vampire. Obviously he'd wanted to all this time because everyone was afraid the baby would kill her, but she refused. Ok, we all know it's good to respect your wife's wishes, but this is a person who openly acknowledges she doesn't know what's good for her. Sometimes you have to grow a pair and do what somebody doesn't want you to do. This gets at the heart of what is most fundamentally wrong with this whole series, which I'll return to later. She miraculously survives through some combination of vampire venom and morphine, but not before experiencing the most incredible pain imaginable. Then boom, she's a vampire.
A whole lot of nothing happens between the baby's birth and the ostensible climax of the series. But before I get to that, let me just point out that she names the baby reneesme. Bellas mom is Renee, Edwards adoptive vampire mom is esme. If you had a friend who did that, you would never stop making fun of them. But since this is Bella, everyone acts like its no big deal. So during the early stages of her vampirism, everybody is totally interested in what her vampire power would. And Bella is so pathetic that when no extraordinary power is apparent, people start assuming her power is that she's ale to control herself from not biting humans... Better? Than other newborn vampires. I'll just skip to the end and tell you her power turns out to be creating a psychic "shield" that can protect herself and others from other vampire powers, kind of like Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four, or the daughter from the Incredibles if youre too young to know what that is.
(continued in part 2)
The asinine final chapter of twilight concerns the birth of Edward and Bella's child, an ultimate showdown of vampires that amounts to nothing, and way too much stupid description about Bella becoming a vampire. I'm gonna blow through the plot here so's I can commence to bitching about the book sooner.
There's a wedding, blah blah blah, they go to brazil for their honeymoon and Bella gets knocked up right away. The way this book deals with sex is one of the most laughable things about it. The morning after their wedding night, Bella wakes up and finds herself covered in feathers because Edward had to bite the pillow to keep from totally destroying Bella's vagina. First of all, wow, real subtle there. Second, it is obvious to me that stephenie meyer is not at all familiar with the term "pillow biter" or it's attendant connotations. If you are unfamiliar, go watch waiting for Guffman, or just think about it logically for two seconds. It's hilarious, that you would spend three books building this man up as the most amazing specimen of masculinity, then as soon as he hits the sheets you unintentionally tag him with the derisive term for a gay bottom. And yes, i have now taken to referring to stephenie meyer in the second person. That is how damaging these books have been to my world.
As far as I can tell, Edward and Bella manage to have sex exactly twice before her pregnancy starts causing such horrific complications she needs to be bedridden. See, after the first time, Edward has all the pangs of guilt over it because... She had bruises on her thighs afterward. Yeah. Apparently during his 150 years on earth, nobody ever told him there are other positions than just pounding away at some chicks open legs. Also, bruises means you got off easy, sweetheart. So anyway, the pregnancy absolutely rips Bella a new one. She can't keep anything down, the baby kicks her so hard it breaks her ribs, etc. this part of the book is actually kinda fun, seeing Bella finally, finally suffer as bad as she has deserved to all this time. Unfortunately, we are cheated out of experiencing it through her pov because the narration abruptly shifts to Jacob at this point, for no reason. Hey, I'll take any respite from the tortured prose of Bellas pov, but you'd think the one time it'd be important to be in the characters head is during the most horrendously painful experience of her life. But that's stephenie Meyer for you, the woman who has deomnstrated over and over that she doesn't understand how literature works.
So after something like 2 months of pregnancy, the baby comes, snaps her spine in half, and Edward has no choice but to turn her into a vampire. Obviously he'd wanted to all this time because everyone was afraid the baby would kill her, but she refused. Ok, we all know it's good to respect your wife's wishes, but this is a person who openly acknowledges she doesn't know what's good for her. Sometimes you have to grow a pair and do what somebody doesn't want you to do. This gets at the heart of what is most fundamentally wrong with this whole series, which I'll return to later. She miraculously survives through some combination of vampire venom and morphine, but not before experiencing the most incredible pain imaginable. Then boom, she's a vampire.
A whole lot of nothing happens between the baby's birth and the ostensible climax of the series. But before I get to that, let me just point out that she names the baby reneesme. Bellas mom is Renee, Edwards adoptive vampire mom is esme. If you had a friend who did that, you would never stop making fun of them. But since this is Bella, everyone acts like its no big deal. So during the early stages of her vampirism, everybody is totally interested in what her vampire power would. And Bella is so pathetic that when no extraordinary power is apparent, people start assuming her power is that she's ale to control herself from not biting humans... Better? Than other newborn vampires. I'll just skip to the end and tell you her power turns out to be creating a psychic "shield" that can protect herself and others from other vampire powers, kind of like Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four, or the daughter from the Incredibles if youre too young to know what that is.
(continued in part 2)
Friday, July 27, 2012
My faults
This isn't a complete list. These are just the ones that reoccur most frequently, and with a vengeance.
I can't trust anyone.
If it came down to the choice between truly putting my trust in a person, and being left alone, I'd choose being alone every time. And it's not that I believe everyone is evil and out to get me with malicious intent. It's just my belief that anybody who truly knows me, who has had a glimpse into the core of who I am as a person, would simply choose not to be around me. I use pre-emptive rejection as a weapon against the possibility that I will be rejected. I would rather lose the connection with another person on my own terms than lose it because someone of their own free will decided it wasn't worth the effort. I list this first because it is at the root of almost everything else that's wrong with me. It's why I'm dishonest, it's why I can't make or keep friends, it's the reason I suspect everybody else's motives, it's what makes me afraid of losing the love of everyone who loves me, and on and on and on.
I have a bad temper.
When I was a child, my two older brothers used to try to get me mad. Then they would laugh at my anger and call me "temper boy, temper boy". That boy never fully went away. I just got better at suppressing him. I used to have these weird explosions of anger, usually resulting in self-directed (or property-directed) violence. I used to punch myself in the head as hard as I could, several times at a go. I've banged my head against more things than I can recall. My parents had a stairway at their old house that I used to throw myself down. One time I ran down my street and tackled a garbage can, linebacker-style. Another time my car ran out of gas and I punched the steering wheel so hard the horn got stuck and went "ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHNNNNN" for several minutes until a nice guy (and total stranger) living on the block came out and cut it off for me, before driving me to the gas station and filling my tank up for me. I've gotten better over the years at not taking my anger out on things, but sometimes the boy comes back and whenever it does, it's still as powerful as ever. I feel totally out of control, even if I manage not to destroy or injure anything. I'm starting to realize it'll never go away, it's just this beast I carry inside me forever. Maybe this explains why the Hulk was my favorite superhero when I was a little kid.
I focus on the negative side of everything.
Which is obvious to everybody who knows me (see fault #1). On the one hand, this can be a useful analytical skill. But when applied to one's own life, it's nothing but a bludgeon.
This isn't all, but I don't really care about the others. These seem to be the most significant, the ones I can see causing serious problems down the line. I have to figure out a way to keep these tendencies in check, or they will mess with my life. Anyway I'm working on it. I know awareness isn't the same thing as improvement, but it's a start, right?
I can't trust anyone.
If it came down to the choice between truly putting my trust in a person, and being left alone, I'd choose being alone every time. And it's not that I believe everyone is evil and out to get me with malicious intent. It's just my belief that anybody who truly knows me, who has had a glimpse into the core of who I am as a person, would simply choose not to be around me. I use pre-emptive rejection as a weapon against the possibility that I will be rejected. I would rather lose the connection with another person on my own terms than lose it because someone of their own free will decided it wasn't worth the effort. I list this first because it is at the root of almost everything else that's wrong with me. It's why I'm dishonest, it's why I can't make or keep friends, it's the reason I suspect everybody else's motives, it's what makes me afraid of losing the love of everyone who loves me, and on and on and on.
I have a bad temper.
When I was a child, my two older brothers used to try to get me mad. Then they would laugh at my anger and call me "temper boy, temper boy". That boy never fully went away. I just got better at suppressing him. I used to have these weird explosions of anger, usually resulting in self-directed (or property-directed) violence. I used to punch myself in the head as hard as I could, several times at a go. I've banged my head against more things than I can recall. My parents had a stairway at their old house that I used to throw myself down. One time I ran down my street and tackled a garbage can, linebacker-style. Another time my car ran out of gas and I punched the steering wheel so hard the horn got stuck and went "ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHNNNNN" for several minutes until a nice guy (and total stranger) living on the block came out and cut it off for me, before driving me to the gas station and filling my tank up for me. I've gotten better over the years at not taking my anger out on things, but sometimes the boy comes back and whenever it does, it's still as powerful as ever. I feel totally out of control, even if I manage not to destroy or injure anything. I'm starting to realize it'll never go away, it's just this beast I carry inside me forever. Maybe this explains why the Hulk was my favorite superhero when I was a little kid.
I focus on the negative side of everything.
Which is obvious to everybody who knows me (see fault #1). On the one hand, this can be a useful analytical skill. But when applied to one's own life, it's nothing but a bludgeon.
This isn't all, but I don't really care about the others. These seem to be the most significant, the ones I can see causing serious problems down the line. I have to figure out a way to keep these tendencies in check, or they will mess with my life. Anyway I'm working on it. I know awareness isn't the same thing as improvement, but it's a start, right?
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Goodbye ain't
From this day forward, effectively immediately (or whenever I start feeling like it), I am hereby removing the word "ain't" from my vocabulary. It's going to be difficult to let go of, since I love saying it so much, but my wife asked me nicely to stop saying it and so I had to acquiesce, mainly because I couldn't come up with a compelling reason why I should keep saying it. I don't know whether she's opposed to the word on principle or if she just doesn't like it when I say it. She said to me "You're not Huckleberry Finn", and I just can't argue with that point.
So goodbye, ain't. You were fun and ungrammatical. It's going to be hard singing along to every pop song that I love and having to correct the lyrics, but it is a necessary commitment.
So goodbye, ain't. You were fun and ungrammatical. It's going to be hard singing along to every pop song that I love and having to correct the lyrics, but it is a necessary commitment.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Eclipse
I get it now. It took three entire volumes, but I finally
understand the appeal of these books. It doesn't make me like them any
better, but it does make the phenomenon a little less inexplicable. These books are porn for girls with low self-esteem.
And not in the Arrested Development sense of "girls with low
self-esteem". These books are meant to serve as living proof that you
can be a big soggy sack of nothing and still receive undying,
unconditional love from everyone around you. Not only do you not have to
put any effort into being kind, or charismatic, or decent in any way,
you can actually be actively unpleasant to everyone you know and all
people will ever do is lavish constant affirmations of praise on you and
indulge your every whim like the spoiled bitch princess you are. That's
the real fantasy of this series, not the vampire/werewolf crap.
Eclipse is not the worst book of this series, but that's not a compliment. For a while, it seems like Stephenie Meyer is going out of her way not to repeat the mistakes of the first two books. Dream sequences are kept to a minimum. We get some backstory that has to be told from the point of view of characters other than Bella, for a change. Bella even does something useful for the first time in this series: she deduces that the vampire(s) who raided her room and stole her clothes earlier in the book are the same as the groups of vampires who are responsible for a slew of unsolved murders up in Seattle. The plot of this book is that the girl vampire who was soulmates with the evil vampire who tried to kill Bella in the first book has been building up an army of newborn vampires to stage an attack on Edward's family.
This has potential for excitement because as soon as you hear about you think "Hey, the good vampires should team up with the werewolves and fight these guys!" But unfortunately, that potential is never realized. The Cullens and the werewolves are all raring to go kick some newb-vampire ass, but Bella, being a killjoy spoilsport, refuses to let Edward join in the battle, despite the fact that, you know, him being in the fight gives them a significant tactical advantage. Once again, she puts her own selfish needs above everyone else's, putting everyone else's life in danger in the process, and instead of being called out for it she gets treated like her requests are perfectly reasonable and is accommodated accordingly. So instead of being treated to a epic orgy of vampire-killing action, we as readers merely have to settle for a much smaller-scale showdown between Edward, the vengeful female vampire, one of Jacob's friends, and another bad guy vampire, while Edward experiences the actual big battle telepathically. At the risk of quoting Jay-Z's "Takeover", that's so LAAAAAAMMME.
What's lamer still is the book's treatment of sexual mores. OK, so Edward puts the condition of turning Bella into a vampire that she has to marry him first. That's pretty controlling, but somewhat understandable. But then Bella tries to get him to sleep with her before they go through with any of this stuff. Not that you could blame Edward for blanching at the idea of having sex with such a hateful person, but he's constantly been telling her how much he loves her and how "amazing" he thinks she is all this time. And his reasons for not doing it are flimsy. First he's like, "I'd kill you." Maybe he had been planning on doing her only after she became a vampire or something, but she wants to experience this as a human, which she is well within her rights to want. But I still don't buy that just because he's a vampire, he'd be unable to control his super-strength during sex. If anything, being a 117-year-old virgin just means that he wouldn't last long enough in the sack to put Bella in any danger at all (except the danger of an underwhelming sexual experience). Then, he claims he wants to preserve his virginity until marriage because he's committed every other sin in the book, and he wants to remain "virtuous" in the last remaining area. So, the guy who betrays no other religious inclination whatsoever in any of these books suddenly becomes all pious when it comes to chastity. I understand that Stephenie Meyer wants to impose her values on us, but there had to have been a more elegant way to do it. Near the end, Edward finally relents and decides to give her some, but then for no reason at all she declines and the only explanation we get from her is "I want to do this right." Well that sure cleared it up!
The love triangle is way overblown. Team Edward vs. Team Jacob is never presented as a legitimate choice. At the end of the book, Bella arbitrarily comes to the realization that she actually is in love with Jacob as well, but instead of putting her in the dilemma of who to spend her life with, all this does is wrack her with guilt over how to let Jacob down easy. Keep in mind that earlier in the book, she punched Jacob in the face for kissing her. (not that Jacob wasn't asking for it; he kind of rape-kissed her) How she went from punching a guy in the face for kissing her to claiming to be in love with him is anyone's guess; the text sure doesn't give us any clues. This is nothing but artificial conflict. Bella never for one moment even entertains the thought of leaving Edward, so how is this even a love triangle? Not wanting to hurt somebody's feelings is not the same thing as being in love with that person.
See, in addition to every other defect it is possible for a fictional character to have, Bella is a walking martyr complex. Stephenie Meyer even realizes this, to the extent that she inserts a didactic werewolf/Indian myth about a woman who saves the tribe by sacrificing herself to the vampires. Bella recognizes herself in the woman immediately, and longs to off herself just to give her friends some kind of upper hand in the battle against the bad vampires. Every event that takes place in the book, she never thinks about any of it in any terms other than how it directly impacts her and her happiness. Everybody else falls all over themselves to please her, she never shows any gratitude toward anyone, she even acknowledges that this world would be a better place for all concerned without her. What is this all for, if not to burnish the egos of all the women who identify with someone like Bella?
But this is Meyer's world. Love will happen to you, regardless of whether you seek it or want it or merit it in anyway. Have you heard of this werewolf thing she came up with called "imprinting?" For some reason, in her mythology every werewolf has a certain someone out there that they fall in love with on the spot, no matter what age they are. For the rest of their lives (and they live a long time, even if they're not immortal like the vampires), they remain bonded to this person no matter what happens. One of Jacob's friends falls in love with a baby here. To her credit, Bella is properly outraged by this, but then Jacob explains that when you imprint on a person, you become whatever they need at that point in time. So you'll be her favorite uncle until she's old enough to marry you or whatever. That's the ideal for love, in Stephenie Meyer's world. You see someone once, and it's over. You love them forever, and those feelings never have to be earned or maintained. They just happen, for no reason. It's all about as magical and believable as, well, werewolves and vampires.
Only one book left. Then our nightmare will be over. Unless I decide to start watching the movies.
Eclipse is not the worst book of this series, but that's not a compliment. For a while, it seems like Stephenie Meyer is going out of her way not to repeat the mistakes of the first two books. Dream sequences are kept to a minimum. We get some backstory that has to be told from the point of view of characters other than Bella, for a change. Bella even does something useful for the first time in this series: she deduces that the vampire(s) who raided her room and stole her clothes earlier in the book are the same as the groups of vampires who are responsible for a slew of unsolved murders up in Seattle. The plot of this book is that the girl vampire who was soulmates with the evil vampire who tried to kill Bella in the first book has been building up an army of newborn vampires to stage an attack on Edward's family.
This has potential for excitement because as soon as you hear about you think "Hey, the good vampires should team up with the werewolves and fight these guys!" But unfortunately, that potential is never realized. The Cullens and the werewolves are all raring to go kick some newb-vampire ass, but Bella, being a killjoy spoilsport, refuses to let Edward join in the battle, despite the fact that, you know, him being in the fight gives them a significant tactical advantage. Once again, she puts her own selfish needs above everyone else's, putting everyone else's life in danger in the process, and instead of being called out for it she gets treated like her requests are perfectly reasonable and is accommodated accordingly. So instead of being treated to a epic orgy of vampire-killing action, we as readers merely have to settle for a much smaller-scale showdown between Edward, the vengeful female vampire, one of Jacob's friends, and another bad guy vampire, while Edward experiences the actual big battle telepathically. At the risk of quoting Jay-Z's "Takeover", that's so LAAAAAAMMME.
What's lamer still is the book's treatment of sexual mores. OK, so Edward puts the condition of turning Bella into a vampire that she has to marry him first. That's pretty controlling, but somewhat understandable. But then Bella tries to get him to sleep with her before they go through with any of this stuff. Not that you could blame Edward for blanching at the idea of having sex with such a hateful person, but he's constantly been telling her how much he loves her and how "amazing" he thinks she is all this time. And his reasons for not doing it are flimsy. First he's like, "I'd kill you." Maybe he had been planning on doing her only after she became a vampire or something, but she wants to experience this as a human, which she is well within her rights to want. But I still don't buy that just because he's a vampire, he'd be unable to control his super-strength during sex. If anything, being a 117-year-old virgin just means that he wouldn't last long enough in the sack to put Bella in any danger at all (except the danger of an underwhelming sexual experience). Then, he claims he wants to preserve his virginity until marriage because he's committed every other sin in the book, and he wants to remain "virtuous" in the last remaining area. So, the guy who betrays no other religious inclination whatsoever in any of these books suddenly becomes all pious when it comes to chastity. I understand that Stephenie Meyer wants to impose her values on us, but there had to have been a more elegant way to do it. Near the end, Edward finally relents and decides to give her some, but then for no reason at all she declines and the only explanation we get from her is "I want to do this right." Well that sure cleared it up!
The love triangle is way overblown. Team Edward vs. Team Jacob is never presented as a legitimate choice. At the end of the book, Bella arbitrarily comes to the realization that she actually is in love with Jacob as well, but instead of putting her in the dilemma of who to spend her life with, all this does is wrack her with guilt over how to let Jacob down easy. Keep in mind that earlier in the book, she punched Jacob in the face for kissing her. (not that Jacob wasn't asking for it; he kind of rape-kissed her) How she went from punching a guy in the face for kissing her to claiming to be in love with him is anyone's guess; the text sure doesn't give us any clues. This is nothing but artificial conflict. Bella never for one moment even entertains the thought of leaving Edward, so how is this even a love triangle? Not wanting to hurt somebody's feelings is not the same thing as being in love with that person.
See, in addition to every other defect it is possible for a fictional character to have, Bella is a walking martyr complex. Stephenie Meyer even realizes this, to the extent that she inserts a didactic werewolf/Indian myth about a woman who saves the tribe by sacrificing herself to the vampires. Bella recognizes herself in the woman immediately, and longs to off herself just to give her friends some kind of upper hand in the battle against the bad vampires. Every event that takes place in the book, she never thinks about any of it in any terms other than how it directly impacts her and her happiness. Everybody else falls all over themselves to please her, she never shows any gratitude toward anyone, she even acknowledges that this world would be a better place for all concerned without her. What is this all for, if not to burnish the egos of all the women who identify with someone like Bella?
But this is Meyer's world. Love will happen to you, regardless of whether you seek it or want it or merit it in anyway. Have you heard of this werewolf thing she came up with called "imprinting?" For some reason, in her mythology every werewolf has a certain someone out there that they fall in love with on the spot, no matter what age they are. For the rest of their lives (and they live a long time, even if they're not immortal like the vampires), they remain bonded to this person no matter what happens. One of Jacob's friends falls in love with a baby here. To her credit, Bella is properly outraged by this, but then Jacob explains that when you imprint on a person, you become whatever they need at that point in time. So you'll be her favorite uncle until she's old enough to marry you or whatever. That's the ideal for love, in Stephenie Meyer's world. You see someone once, and it's over. You love them forever, and those feelings never have to be earned or maintained. They just happen, for no reason. It's all about as magical and believable as, well, werewolves and vampires.
Only one book left. Then our nightmare will be over. Unless I decide to start watching the movies.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
New Moon
Bella is a horrible person. In the first book, I thought the problem was that she was pathetic and dull as an old dish sponge. In this book, she's straight-up evil. She flat-out uses Jacob -- after Edward ditches her for reasons that are contrived and silly, his company is the only thing that makes her forget -- and she even admits this to herself and continues to do it. She also deliberately places herself in danger again and again, simply because she thinks she can "hear" Edward's voice whenever she's afraid. This behavior is not romantic, it is the actions of monstrous insecurity and crippling co-dependency. If a real person did any of this stuff, she'd be committed and diagnosed with psychotic egomania, or some other mental disease that doesn't even have a name yet. One of the (bluntly simplistic) themes of this book is "True love is irrational". It should be "Love is ax-crazy fucknuts".
Again, there's hardly any plot. Edward leaves, she hangs out with Jacob, she hangs out with him some more, they fix some broken motorcycles, blah blah blah... When some conflict does come to the fore, it pretty much repeats the same formula as the first book. Guy she's spending time with suddenly starts acting all weird and she can't figure out why; it's revealed that he's part of an ancient order of supernatural beasts. There's no reason this should take 400+ pages to transpire, but it does. There's so much padding in this book it could double as protective gear for football players. See, in addition to making Bella a vapid, thoroughly selfish manipulator, Stephenie Meyer sees fit to make her protagonist the slowest, dumbest person who has ever existed. How many different ways can you make your main character loathsome? As readers we are mentally screaming at her "ARRGH, THEY'RE WEREWOLVES, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT! THERE'S BEEN GIANT ANIMAL SIGHTINGS AND JACOB EVEN TOLD YOU ABOUT THEIR TRIBAL WOLF LEGEND IN THE LAST BOOK!!! DUHhhhhhhhHHHHHHH!!!" Even after she witnesses a goddamn pack of giant wolves chasing away the evil vampire from the first book, it still takes her forever to put two and two together.
And again (since I don't know where else to complain about this) enough with the lame-ass dream sequences already. This thing goes way overboard with them, to the point where it's less a vampires-and-werewolves romance novel and more of a dream journal broken up with intermittent sequences of vaguely-vampire-and-werewolf-related action. These sequences are used for nothing except the world's most obvious symbolism and reminding me that I hate Bella again.
Jacob was actually a pretty pleasant character up until he became a wolf. After that, he becomes just as sullen and angsty as everyone else in this crummy world. Bella says herself that she likes Jacob because he's a perpetually happy-go-lucky person. But I guess Meyer thinks we'd rather read yet another account of what a "burden" it is to have awesome powers, how much of a "freak" someone would feel like if they could do something that almost nobody else on earth can do. For all her faults, Bella seems to be the only person who sees clearly on this matter. She wants nothing more than to become a vampire (albeit just so she can stay with Edward forever) and doesn't care a whit about leading a normal life. At the end of this book, Edward promises to change her into one only after she marries him. His interest in marriage is arbitrary and seems to be there only so that Bella can have a reason to balk at being bitten.
I'll return to that later. The turning point of this book hinges on one of the most absurd, contrived, and ridiculously unbelievable misunderstandings I can think of. After Bella throws herself into the ocean in the middle of a hurricane (after Jacob comes to his senses and realizes he can't stand to be near her), Edward somehow gets wind of it and thinks that she killed herself. See, one of the elders in Jacob's tribe died of a heart attack earlier that day, so Edward places one phone call to Bella's house, asks to speak to Bella's dad and Jacob (who answered the phone for some reason) tells him "He's at the funeral." So of course, Edward does what NO PERSON WOULD EVER DO and jumps immediately to the conclusion that Bella is dead. He then jets immediately to Italy so he can commit suicide by exposing himself as a vampire in front of some kind of Reigning Vampire Elite, who are the only ones who can kill him. This is a classic example of what Roger Ebert used to call an "Idiot Plot" -- a simple misunderstanding that could be cleared up if the characters would only have a conversation that lasted longer than 5 seconds.
So let's review this sequence of events:
Since we're back on marriage again, let's revisit the ending. Bella has weird hang-ups about marriage because she's a child of divorce. Some would call this a convenient plot device that's only there to prolong the story, but I think it's consistent. First of all, it's established that Bella hates absolutely everything. But it's also the only theme of the book that really works. In fact, I'd prefer to think of the Twilight Saga as less of a supernatural romance tale and more of an author's screed justifying her decision to marry and have children early. I don't know anything about Stephenie Meyer's biography, but I know she's Mormon and she's married and has kids. Therefore, I view these books as the work of an enormously insecure, egotistical and naturally defensive woman working through the following issues: 1) her parent's divorce and 2) the fear that she squandered her life by settling down early and devoting it to her family. These things are presented only as the subtlest subtext, but they're the only way these books even make sense to me. Bella takes one look at Edward and boom, from that moment, her life is over. But it's OK because it's "true love" and "love is irrational". Bella's fear of marriage is actually one of her few redeeming qualities for me. A person this young should be afraid to marry. It doesn't make up for all the shit she puts her so-called "friends" and "boyfriends" through, but I'm grasping here.
As much as it pains me to admit it, Meyer's ideas aren't horrible. I'd totally read an epic saga about a centuries-old feud between a vampire family and a mutant werewolf tribe (even without getting into the unfortunate racial implications -- all the wolves are American Indians and all the vampires are white, as far as I can tell). These books should JUST be about that. But again, the point-of-view character sabotages any shot it had at excitement. Imagine how boring the Spider-Man comics would be if they were entirely told from Mary Jane's perspective. Or Aunt May. No one would read that. This is rule #1 (or #2, at worst) of writing -- pick a good main character. Or at least, one who is relevant to the actual plot.
I'm not sure if I can continue with this series. It can't get any better. But can it possibly get any worse? Ah, there's the rub.
Again, there's hardly any plot. Edward leaves, she hangs out with Jacob, she hangs out with him some more, they fix some broken motorcycles, blah blah blah... When some conflict does come to the fore, it pretty much repeats the same formula as the first book. Guy she's spending time with suddenly starts acting all weird and she can't figure out why; it's revealed that he's part of an ancient order of supernatural beasts. There's no reason this should take 400+ pages to transpire, but it does. There's so much padding in this book it could double as protective gear for football players. See, in addition to making Bella a vapid, thoroughly selfish manipulator, Stephenie Meyer sees fit to make her protagonist the slowest, dumbest person who has ever existed. How many different ways can you make your main character loathsome? As readers we are mentally screaming at her "ARRGH, THEY'RE WEREWOLVES, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT! THERE'S BEEN GIANT ANIMAL SIGHTINGS AND JACOB EVEN TOLD YOU ABOUT THEIR TRIBAL WOLF LEGEND IN THE LAST BOOK!!! DUHhhhhhhhHHHHHHH!!!" Even after she witnesses a goddamn pack of giant wolves chasing away the evil vampire from the first book, it still takes her forever to put two and two together.
And again (since I don't know where else to complain about this) enough with the lame-ass dream sequences already. This thing goes way overboard with them, to the point where it's less a vampires-and-werewolves romance novel and more of a dream journal broken up with intermittent sequences of vaguely-vampire-and-werewolf-related action. These sequences are used for nothing except the world's most obvious symbolism and reminding me that I hate Bella again.
Jacob was actually a pretty pleasant character up until he became a wolf. After that, he becomes just as sullen and angsty as everyone else in this crummy world. Bella says herself that she likes Jacob because he's a perpetually happy-go-lucky person. But I guess Meyer thinks we'd rather read yet another account of what a "burden" it is to have awesome powers, how much of a "freak" someone would feel like if they could do something that almost nobody else on earth can do. For all her faults, Bella seems to be the only person who sees clearly on this matter. She wants nothing more than to become a vampire (albeit just so she can stay with Edward forever) and doesn't care a whit about leading a normal life. At the end of this book, Edward promises to change her into one only after she marries him. His interest in marriage is arbitrary and seems to be there only so that Bella can have a reason to balk at being bitten.
I'll return to that later. The turning point of this book hinges on one of the most absurd, contrived, and ridiculously unbelievable misunderstandings I can think of. After Bella throws herself into the ocean in the middle of a hurricane (after Jacob comes to his senses and realizes he can't stand to be near her), Edward somehow gets wind of it and thinks that she killed herself. See, one of the elders in Jacob's tribe died of a heart attack earlier that day, so Edward places one phone call to Bella's house, asks to speak to Bella's dad and Jacob (who answered the phone for some reason) tells him "He's at the funeral." So of course, Edward does what NO PERSON WOULD EVER DO and jumps immediately to the conclusion that Bella is dead. He then jets immediately to Italy so he can commit suicide by exposing himself as a vampire in front of some kind of Reigning Vampire Elite, who are the only ones who can kill him. This is a classic example of what Roger Ebert used to call an "Idiot Plot" -- a simple misunderstanding that could be cleared up if the characters would only have a conversation that lasted longer than 5 seconds.
So let's review this sequence of events:
- Bella throws herself into the ocean
- On the same day, one of Jacob's relatives died
- Edward hears about it or something
- Edward calls Bella's house; Jacob answers
- Jacob says that Bella's dad is "at the funeral"
- Instead of saying "Gee, I'm a vampire who can move 1,000 miles an hour, maybe I should go pay my respects to the woman I supposedly love more than anything can possibly love any other thing or at least get a confirmed visual ID of the body", he decides "I HAVE TO GO KILL MYSELF RIGHT NOW IT'S A RACE AGAINST TIME AND EVEN THOUGH I'VE BEEN ALIVE OVER 100 YEARS THERE IS NO ROOM FOR PATIENCE OR SECOND THOUGHTS ON THIS MATTER ARRRRGH"
Since we're back on marriage again, let's revisit the ending. Bella has weird hang-ups about marriage because she's a child of divorce. Some would call this a convenient plot device that's only there to prolong the story, but I think it's consistent. First of all, it's established that Bella hates absolutely everything. But it's also the only theme of the book that really works. In fact, I'd prefer to think of the Twilight Saga as less of a supernatural romance tale and more of an author's screed justifying her decision to marry and have children early. I don't know anything about Stephenie Meyer's biography, but I know she's Mormon and she's married and has kids. Therefore, I view these books as the work of an enormously insecure, egotistical and naturally defensive woman working through the following issues: 1) her parent's divorce and 2) the fear that she squandered her life by settling down early and devoting it to her family. These things are presented only as the subtlest subtext, but they're the only way these books even make sense to me. Bella takes one look at Edward and boom, from that moment, her life is over. But it's OK because it's "true love" and "love is irrational". Bella's fear of marriage is actually one of her few redeeming qualities for me. A person this young should be afraid to marry. It doesn't make up for all the shit she puts her so-called "friends" and "boyfriends" through, but I'm grasping here.
As much as it pains me to admit it, Meyer's ideas aren't horrible. I'd totally read an epic saga about a centuries-old feud between a vampire family and a mutant werewolf tribe (even without getting into the unfortunate racial implications -- all the wolves are American Indians and all the vampires are white, as far as I can tell). These books should JUST be about that. But again, the point-of-view character sabotages any shot it had at excitement. Imagine how boring the Spider-Man comics would be if they were entirely told from Mary Jane's perspective. Or Aunt May. No one would read that. This is rule #1 (or #2, at worst) of writing -- pick a good main character. Or at least, one who is relevant to the actual plot.
I'm not sure if I can continue with this series. It can't get any better. But can it possibly get any worse? Ah, there's the rub.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Twilight
I hate this book. Let me preface this by saying that I'm clearly not the audience for it. I've never read a romance novel (but they can't all be this bad), and I'm not a girl and I prefer to read books that leave me feeling overwhelmed by the sheer level of detail in them and reminded of the infinite possibilities in life.
But I read all the Harry Potter books and mostly enjoyed them (the last 2 were pretty weak). I love The Hunger Games. Obviously, not being the target audience does not preclude me from enjoying something.
Most of the problems in Twilight stem from its protagonist. Bella just doesn't have anything going for her. She sees herself as a perfectly average, uninteresting person (which she is). So it remains a mystery to us why everybody she meets seems to fall in love with her. Strangers go out of their way to befriend her. Boys start fighting over her BEFORE she even starts hanging out with the vampires. Of course, all this attention does nothing but embarrass her, because she is a hateful person and probably incapable of relating to anyone else. The only person she shows any interest in is the one guy in school who openly acts hostile toward her. But then, oops, turns out that guy is just another lovestruck suitor who was immediately smitten with her all along. Why? We'll never know. Oh yeah, her blood smells good and he can't read her thoughts.
This last reason actually makes sense. If he could read Bella's thoughts, he'd realize that she's never had a remotely interesting thought in her entire life. Unfortunately, we as readers are not so lucky. The first-person narrative choice does nothing but underline how little happens in the story. Bella doesn't even find out that Edward is a vampire until roughly 100 pages in, after he's saved her life twice (TWICE). They both fall in love with each other on the spot, so there's no push-pull or romantic tension or anything. The only conflict seems to be that Bella wants to become a vampire right away and Edward basically gives no reason for why she can't except "Oh, silly Bella." Basically all their conversations are like this:
EDWARD: I can't be with you because it makes me want to bite you and drink all your blood.
BELLA: Maybe you should bite me, then I'll get to be with you and this story will mercifully be over.
EDWARD: But I won't be able to stop until you're dead, stupid.
BELLA: Fine then, don't be with me! I'll just be standing over there in case you ever get the urge to bite something.
Ugh. She's so passive-aggressive and lacking in personality that I'm just dying for the viewpoint to switch to somebody else for a spell. When she's not complaining about everything that happens to her, she's fawning over Edward, whether it's his perfect looks, his voice, or his his mannerisms, every one of which sends her into a tizzy. This isn't so bad, really (I like any confirmation that women are just as shallow as men when it comes to looks), but I wish Stephenie Meyer were better at writing descriptions. Pretty much all she does pile on the adjectives and cliches. I can only read about how "beautiful" and "perfect" someone is and how they resemble a "Greek God" or an "angel" so much until I start mentally skipping over those sections. When I know what you're going to write before I read it, there is no reason to continue.
I want to complain about another thing here: Bella spends way too much time narrating her dreams here. Why should we care about them? They're dreams, and unless it's revealed in later installments that her dreams can predict the future, there's no reason to include them because they have no bearing on anything that happens anywhere in the story. This is Creative Writing 101 stuff that Meyer sees fit to just blatantly violate over and over again. Oh, but it's consistent with the protagonist she's created, whose depths of self-absorption inspire her to narrate the mundane details of her banal daily routine, right down to what she cooked for dinner and what CD she is listening to. Isn't this book supposed to be about vampires? Why all the minutia about the boring life of a boring person?
Anyway, about 380-odd pages into the book, some semblance of conflict finally introduces itself in the form of an evil vampire coven that wants to hunt humans. Edward and the other Cullens scramble to protect Bella, but she's so dumb she falls for the old "I have your mother but I don't have to prove she's actually here" trick and basically walks right into the hunter's trap. It's not satisfactorily explained how she gets rescued anyway, or maybe it is, I don't remember. There's also the Blacks, Jacob and his family that we all know are werewolves but none of that stuff happens in this book. There's barely a hint of the love triangle that supposedly dominates this series. I've heard people complain that Gale gets the short shrift in THG, but here Jacob has literally no other personality traits than "yet another guy who is attracted to Bella, except this one somehow doesn't repulse her completely despite not being the embodiment of physical perfection". Maybe his character develops a little more in the next book, but right now it's looking like Team Jacob never stood a chance.
There's other problems with the book, but to enumerate them all would take far longer than to just say that Ms. Meyer badly needed an editor. The prose is easy to read (in the same way that a little girl's diary would be) but difficult to avoid rolling your eyes at, the concept of a family of vampires hopping from place to place every few years had potential, even the idea of them hunting animals so they don't have to bite humans wasn't a bad one. This book was fixable. But since we see the story unfold through the eyes of an unbelievably boring person who damn near doesn't do anything that's not "swooning at everything Edward does", it's doomed from the word go.
Anyway I'm reading New Moon now. Downward is the only way forward.
But I read all the Harry Potter books and mostly enjoyed them (the last 2 were pretty weak). I love The Hunger Games. Obviously, not being the target audience does not preclude me from enjoying something.
Most of the problems in Twilight stem from its protagonist. Bella just doesn't have anything going for her. She sees herself as a perfectly average, uninteresting person (which she is). So it remains a mystery to us why everybody she meets seems to fall in love with her. Strangers go out of their way to befriend her. Boys start fighting over her BEFORE she even starts hanging out with the vampires. Of course, all this attention does nothing but embarrass her, because she is a hateful person and probably incapable of relating to anyone else. The only person she shows any interest in is the one guy in school who openly acts hostile toward her. But then, oops, turns out that guy is just another lovestruck suitor who was immediately smitten with her all along. Why? We'll never know. Oh yeah, her blood smells good and he can't read her thoughts.
This last reason actually makes sense. If he could read Bella's thoughts, he'd realize that she's never had a remotely interesting thought in her entire life. Unfortunately, we as readers are not so lucky. The first-person narrative choice does nothing but underline how little happens in the story. Bella doesn't even find out that Edward is a vampire until roughly 100 pages in, after he's saved her life twice (TWICE). They both fall in love with each other on the spot, so there's no push-pull or romantic tension or anything. The only conflict seems to be that Bella wants to become a vampire right away and Edward basically gives no reason for why she can't except "Oh, silly Bella." Basically all their conversations are like this:
EDWARD: I can't be with you because it makes me want to bite you and drink all your blood.
BELLA: Maybe you should bite me, then I'll get to be with you and this story will mercifully be over.
EDWARD: But I won't be able to stop until you're dead, stupid.
BELLA: Fine then, don't be with me! I'll just be standing over there in case you ever get the urge to bite something.
Ugh. She's so passive-aggressive and lacking in personality that I'm just dying for the viewpoint to switch to somebody else for a spell. When she's not complaining about everything that happens to her, she's fawning over Edward, whether it's his perfect looks, his voice, or his his mannerisms, every one of which sends her into a tizzy. This isn't so bad, really (I like any confirmation that women are just as shallow as men when it comes to looks), but I wish Stephenie Meyer were better at writing descriptions. Pretty much all she does pile on the adjectives and cliches. I can only read about how "beautiful" and "perfect" someone is and how they resemble a "Greek God" or an "angel" so much until I start mentally skipping over those sections. When I know what you're going to write before I read it, there is no reason to continue.
I want to complain about another thing here: Bella spends way too much time narrating her dreams here. Why should we care about them? They're dreams, and unless it's revealed in later installments that her dreams can predict the future, there's no reason to include them because they have no bearing on anything that happens anywhere in the story. This is Creative Writing 101 stuff that Meyer sees fit to just blatantly violate over and over again. Oh, but it's consistent with the protagonist she's created, whose depths of self-absorption inspire her to narrate the mundane details of her banal daily routine, right down to what she cooked for dinner and what CD she is listening to. Isn't this book supposed to be about vampires? Why all the minutia about the boring life of a boring person?
Anyway, about 380-odd pages into the book, some semblance of conflict finally introduces itself in the form of an evil vampire coven that wants to hunt humans. Edward and the other Cullens scramble to protect Bella, but she's so dumb she falls for the old "I have your mother but I don't have to prove she's actually here" trick and basically walks right into the hunter's trap. It's not satisfactorily explained how she gets rescued anyway, or maybe it is, I don't remember. There's also the Blacks, Jacob and his family that we all know are werewolves but none of that stuff happens in this book. There's barely a hint of the love triangle that supposedly dominates this series. I've heard people complain that Gale gets the short shrift in THG, but here Jacob has literally no other personality traits than "yet another guy who is attracted to Bella, except this one somehow doesn't repulse her completely despite not being the embodiment of physical perfection". Maybe his character develops a little more in the next book, but right now it's looking like Team Jacob never stood a chance.
There's other problems with the book, but to enumerate them all would take far longer than to just say that Ms. Meyer badly needed an editor. The prose is easy to read (in the same way that a little girl's diary would be) but difficult to avoid rolling your eyes at, the concept of a family of vampires hopping from place to place every few years had potential, even the idea of them hunting animals so they don't have to bite humans wasn't a bad one. This book was fixable. But since we see the story unfold through the eyes of an unbelievably boring person who damn near doesn't do anything that's not "swooning at everything Edward does", it's doomed from the word go.
Anyway I'm reading New Moon now. Downward is the only way forward.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)