|
 Every tradition has its beginning. The practice of sporking, or MSTing, possibly dates back to Paula Smith's infamous 1973 satirical fanfiction A Trekkie's Tale. This story of Mary Sue, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet, gave a name to the stereotypical fanfiction protagonist who does everything better than the main characters and controls the story as the author's self-insert. Star Trek conventions held humorous readings of the story as the zine it was published in made its way through the community. This continued with The Eye of Argon, a horrifically bad fantasy novella written by the late Jim Theis as a teenager. The bizarre purple prose, excruciating gore and sex, and many typos were so hilarious that sci-fi and fantasy conventions would hold round-table readings where you would take turns reading out loud until you were laughing too hard to keep going. This became a phenomenon with Mystery Science Theatre 3000, bringing humorous commentary on movies and educational shorts to the masses. A troll post on an MST3K newsgroup in 1993 was mocked in the same style as the show, slowly catching on as fellow posters found the idea of line-by-line commentary and criticism pretty funny. But Internet line-by-line mockery of written work was still restricted mostly to fanfics and there was controversy over whether or not to ask permission from the author before mocking their work. Tradition held that you didn't insult the author and treated it as being all in good fun. What really changed that was Twilight. Stephenie Meyer is a strait-laced Mormon woman from Connecticut. She got a BA in English from Brigham Young University, considered going to law school because she figured she wasn't that good at actually writing, then got pregnant and became a stay-at-home mom who had never held a job except being a receptionist once. On June 2, 2003, she had a dream of a vampire in love with one of his victims. She quickly banged out a few pages about it, then decided that it would make a great story. Over the next 3 months she completed a book, but saw rejection after rejection until she finally got a publishing deal; an inexperienced assistant at Writers House failed to realize that her manuscript exceeded the word count of a typical young adult novel by several times and accepted it instead of throwing it out like the other publishing houses. Twilight was released in 2005 and rapidly became a bestseller, hitting #5 on the New York Times list for Children's Chapter Books within a month and climbing up to #1. Rave reviews and a massive profit led Meyer to pen another three novels that saw wild success. She became the first ever author to claim all 4 top spots on USA Today's bestseller list simultaneously. A woman who had never envisioned herself as an author and was living a quiet Mormon life suddenly shot to the top of the pile as a household name. The series received a highly profitable film adaptation, graphic novels, companion books, and even a gender-swapped remake of the original. But despite the millions of books sold, they almost immediately became the butt of jokes. What happened? While the series had appeal, Meyer was heavily criticized for her writing talents; as big a name as Stephen King commented on her struggles with prose (admittedly it takes a lot of work to get Stephen loving King to acknowledge you and read your book, even if he doesn't like it very much). The characters were found to be flat. Some of the conflict felt lame or poorly paced. The bigger problem was its treatment of romance. The relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen is infamously abusive on a physical and emotional level, raising serious concerns about Meyer's part in normalizing abuse, stalking, and extreme jealousy as "a sign that he really loves you." A lot of talking was had over the prevalence of these attitudes in society and how much they're impressed on girls from childhood, which could have contributed to the high sales of the books: enough people didn't care. Much was had over Meyer's Mormon values being used to craft the morality of the characters. Things only got worse in subsequent books with a very pedophilia-inducing scene at the end. Much of the criticism itself was criticized, especially the general "Twilight sucks" atmosphere that began to pervade the Western world, for seeming to only choose it as the target because of its popularity with young girls while ignoring similarly bad or worse classic literature. With the release of Twilight right as the Internet was fully exploding into everyone's lives from a young age and everyone had a blog, much mockery was to be had. Countless blogs and forum posts were dedicated to the sporking of the series, to the point where you can read practically the whole drat thing for free online if you want. With such a massive series receiving such widespread criticism, it became common for bad young adult books especially to be torn to shreds line by line, paragraph by paragraph. The demographics of the genre means the sporking field is actually heavily populated by women, especially young ones, and communities and friendships have sprung up from it. Many of them are produced by writers of varying levels of prominence and serve as handy critical analysis of writing, making them highly educational for new storytellers. The trend continues today, often targeting books that seem to follow in the Twilight series' ilk like Fifty Shades of Grey (infamously a BDSM Twilight fanfic with the names changed for publication) and Handbook for Mortals (which I did what's possibly the first ever full sporking of here and even got into a short-lived Twitter spat with the author over her cheating the bestseller list). It's seemingly impossible to release any young adult novel, especially a bad romance one (and especially a bad supernatural romance) without having a dozen people all tear it to shreds. Twilight changed young adult literature in more ways than one, and not always ones authors like. Why am I doing this if so many people already did it? I've done a lot of threads where I read books. Except for my ongoing James Bond thread, they've universally been awful books written by people with highly inflated senses of self-importance. Handbook for Mortals in particular was written by a nutty Twilight fan who managed Jackson Rathbone's band and creeped him the gently caress out with her crush on him, resulting in a temporary band breakup, and tried to use disguised bulk purchases to turn her book into a national bestseller with the ultimate goal of playing the lead actress in the film adaptation. I started on one series, only for it to be so godawful and boring that I didn't even make it halfway through the first book before giving up. But despite all of that, I've never actually sat down and read a whole Twilight book. I've read synopses of them and a ton of excerpts of text and I've begrudgingly been made to sit through all the movies except the last one, but I've never gone through even one of the books from start to finish. My actual knowledge of the books and my opinions on them are incomplete. I initially wanted my next bad book read to be the latest EL James novel, The Mister, based on its newness and some excerpts and reviews that have made it out to be disgustingly hilarious and racist. But I also realized that there's a lot of context in the evolution of writing that led up to it: EL James, after all, is most famous for turning a Twilight fanfic into a book that somehow also became wildly popular and controversial for many of the same reasons. I realized that while I could jump straight into The Mister, I and the people mocking it along with me wouldn't really understand where it came from. The last reason is that I actually wanted to give Stephenie Meyer a fair chance. While much of the Twilight series is pretty bad, it could also be a lot worse. Her books struck a chord with a lot of young girls and there has to be a reason for it, but I'm far outside the intended demographic and missed the book even when girls my age were reading it new. I read a comparison of the opening chapters of this and Handbook for Mortals where it's pointed out that Meyer actually makes some good decisions and seems to have done at least basic planning and editing, whereas Lani Sarem's writing is an atrocious rewrite of a bad film script. While I'm sure we'll get a lot of humor and disgust out of this series, I think it might also be important to point out things that she did right and maybe come to a better understanding of her appeal. As usual, I'll try to stick to an update per day. Depending on the chapter length, that might be one chapter a day or I might have to combine them or cut them to pieces (I don't know how well she structured her chapter lengths). I'll also talk about comparisons to the films, notes on the actors, and explain some background history on things that come up in the books to hopefully get some improved context. We all sparkle down here, Bella. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Aug 7, 2020 |
#
¿
Jun 21, 2019 20:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:29 |
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Good thread, but I think the OP could touch more heavily on the main reason the series became so much of a joke so fast - the sparkling. Brooding bad-boy vampires being afraid to go out into the sunset because it'd mean they looked like they were dipped in glitter was one of the best moments of comedy of 00s YA, even if (hell, especially because) Meyer never quite realised it herself. I really think the complaints about the abusive relationship and so on (which are not that far out of the ordinary for YA romance - and believe me, that wasn't intended as a defence) wouldn't have got nearly as far off the ground without so many people being drawn in by 'this is the skin of a killer'. The sparkling is definitely something to mock, but I think the glorification of abuse is what gave everything meat. It becomes the main justification even for people unfamiliar with the series to turn away from it just based on what they heard. You see a book series selling by the millions and becoming a phenomenon and the first thing you hear is “The guy is incredibly abusive but it’s portrayed as love.” Christian Grey rapes the lead and everyone immediately compares it to Edward Cullen and where the book came from. That’s why I tend to grimace at the “You’re just on the hate bandwagon because it’s a girl thing” excuse. No matter what the book did right, there’s something profoundly wrong and disturbing behind it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2019 02:34
|
|
|
Somebody Awful posted:Betting it's still not as wrong and disturbing as OH JOHN RINGO NO. Yeah, I'd like to actually treat these books fairly. Ringo, Mack Maloney, Larry Correia, etc. are the kind of awful that you want to report them to the police before they hurt someone. Stephanie Meyer managed to make an extremely popular bestseller series that's as hated as much as it's loved, which is pretty different.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2019 05:29
|
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:its was kind of wild since the first couple of these came out when i was like 11-13, but like immediately after i had my first girlfriend i realized that these books very much sucked for reasons besides the sparkling and being popular It was my first girlfriend at the end of high school that led to me even looking at Twilight. She was super into everything to do with it for a year or two and this is when the movies were still in production so Hot Topic was just filled with Twilight poo poo. She made me watch New Moon in the theater and I couldn't stop laughing at it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2019 17:48
|
|
|
This book has some stuff at the beginning. On the first page:quote:For my big sister, Emily, without whose enthusiasm this story might still be unfinished. Stephenie Meyer is one of six children. She sent Emily chapters as she finished them and Emily encouraged her to continue writing and get the finished book published. quote:But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, This is from the classic King James translation. I think we all know the story of Genesis and where it goes from God's warning. It's difficult to tell exactly what the "knowledge" is a metaphor for her: dating a vampire or becoming a vampire. Preface quote:I'd never given much thought to how I would die—though I’d had reason enough in the last few months—but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. So the first problem is in the title of this sequence. A preface is an out-of-universe introduction to the book that explains the author, why they wrote it, etc. What we have here is a prologue. An in media res prologue is pretty typical. While it tries to start the book with high stakes, the writing is very clunky and uses a few too many words. The big problem with it is that Bella does give thought to how she would die before this occurs! Chapter 1: First Sight quote:My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt—sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka. The first thing this paragraph does is establish Bella as a whiner, which doesn't exactly endear her to the audience. Imagine your estranged 14-year-old daughter saying "I don't want to visit you unless we can do a two-week vacation in Hollywood every year!" quote:It was to Forks that I now exiled myself—an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYt0SDnrBE quote:“Bella,” my mom said to me—the last of a thousand times—before I got on the plane. “You don’t have to do this.”  Bella's mother, Renee, was played in the films by Sarah Clarke. She's currently starring on Bosch as Eleanor Wish, the protagonist Harry Bosch's ex-wife and former FBI agent-turned-poker player. Her boyfriend and prom date in high school was Jon Hamm! I'm not fond of how we're introduced to Renee. On the first page Bella immediately introduces her as essentially an overgrown child. quote:“I want to go,” I lied. I’d always been a bad liar, but I’d been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now. All of this text is the entirety of Bella's time in Phoenix and flying over. As an editor, I probably would have recommended removing everything before the final line and starting with her arrival in Forks or (if you had room to spare) stretching out the beginning to give Bella more time with her mother. quote:Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He’d already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car.  Charlie Swan seems to be universally regarded as one of the best characters in the book, even among people who aren't fans. Especially in the films, he remains easily the most relatable and grounded main cast member. Charlie was played by Billy Burke, who would go on to play the lead Miles Matheson in Revolution. quote:When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn’t see it as an omen—just unavoidable. I’d already said my goodbyes to the sun. Another two things to note: Bella is continuing her whining and demanding of her father, and she's also calling him by his first name. Calling a parent by their first name is a classic sign of estrangement, but I want to see exactly how Bella and Charlie's relationship got to where it is and if it's deserved. Who comes out looking better? quote:Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane. Stephenie Meyer has a big problem with telling instead of showing. Much of the book is very obviously the product of a first-time writer; this might be why it attracted the fanbase it did, as many of its fans are likewise young writers who haven't really developed their craft further than Meyer had by 2005. quote:“No.” Stop being so loving ungrateful! It's noticeable how even a few pages in Charlie is already the most endearing character in the book. quote:“You didn’t need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car.”   As most of the world found out shortly after the first movie released, Forks is a real town in Washington! It has a population of roughly 3700 people, a pretty typical small rural town that used to rely on the timber industry. The land was occupied by the Quileute tribe until a treaty in 1855 forced them onto the La Push reservation at the mouth of the Quillayute River. The popularity of the Twilight series revitalized the sleepy rainforest town and turned it into a major travel destination. The Forever Twilight in Forks Festival is held every year during the week of September 13, Bella's birthday. Despite the x7 increase in tourism that Forks has received from the series, none of the films were shot in Forks; they were shot mostly in Portland, OR and Vancouver, Canada due to the superior infrastructure to support such a large film project and the famous tax credits that lead to Vancouver being one of the biggest filming sites on the planet. A big change is that Breaking Dawn saw a lot of filming in Louisiana due to incentives and the Celtic Media Center in Baton Rouge providing a cheap soundstage. quote:Eventually we made it to Charlie’s. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that he’d bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had—the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new—well, new to me—truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it. I didn’t know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged—the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed. I just feel sorry for the poor guy dealing with a daughter like this.   Meyer had originally envisioned the truck as a 1953 Chevy, but the films used a 1963 Chevrolet C/10 Stepside. Presumably it was ironically easier to find a rusty but operational truck from a decade or two later, whereas most 1950s car owners with running vehicles keep theirs obsessively pristine. Bella's keys sold for $600 at auction. quote:It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window—these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.  The film did an admirable job in replicating Meyer's description. Regardless of what one may think of the quality here, faithfulness to the book even in little details is one of the key elements to a good film adaptation of a novel. With such horrid adaptations as Cirque du Freak on the market, there's something refreshing about seeing them try to get it right. quote:There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact. I'm about 10 years out of high school, but I'll say that Meyer was definitely not writing from experience here! I went to school with basically the same class from elementary school until graduation in 2010; people that I knew before puberty died of car crashes just a few years after the last time we saw each other. There was never once a sense that someone from elsewhere was "a freak", especially not by 16. Hot girl from Canada moves in? Great! Everyone immediately accepts her and just treats her like normal! Meyer never experienced a sudden move during high school in the first place and said in an FAQ that this was actually based on her move from high school in Scottsdale, AZ to Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. quote:Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond—a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps—all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun. Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself—and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.  While this description is generic, Meyer gave an FAQ answer about her appearance: In my head, Bella is very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped—a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched. She’s five foot four inches tall, slender but not at all muscular, and weighs about 115 pounds. She has stubby fingernails because she has a nervous habit of biting them. And there’s your very detailed description. Many people have noted the similarity of her appearance to Meyer. As Meyer puts it, she "went from a 5 to an 8" because of the lack of pretty girls in Provo compared to back home. Unless she went through some serious changes through adulthood, she is far from an unattractive woman. I wonder how much of Bella's depressing and awkward personality is a reflection of Meyer's own self-worth in her youth.  We see the first of our infamous couple here. The amount of hatred Kristen Stewart received for her part in the Twilight films is unbelievable; she became one of the highest paid actresses in the world off the back of a performance that's honestly godawful. But I don't necessarily fault her for it, as she played the character as directed. She received praise for her pre-Twilight work and has been critically acclaimed afterward, which makes me wary of criticizing her or Robert Pattinson too much. Stewart's own life after fame has been somewhat tumultuous. She legitimately dated Robert Pattinson for a while, but had an affair with the married-and-19-years-older Rupert Sanders, her director for Snow White and the Huntsman. She's proudly bisexual and has dated probably more men and women than can be counted, currently Victoria's Secret model Stella Maxwell. quote:I didn’t relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. We're actually still in the first chapter! These suckers are long. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 23, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2019 07:29
|
|
|
HIJK posted:Good thread. I never made it past the halfway point in the first novel, though one of my friends was into it and witnessed the EL James drama go down in real time. (I got a lot of middle of the night texts updating me on everything, minute by minute.) Like I said, I haven't read more than excerpts and watching the movies, but it's one of those series that could have been as legitimately good as its sales suggest. It's clearly got a lot of appeal for its demographic, but it seems like it's let down by shoddy writing (it shows a ton of telltale signs of a first-time writer; it's very similar to reading a teenage girl's fanfics) and some very bad morals that come at least partially from her upbringing. It's easy to just do a bash thread where you point and laugh at easy targets, but I'm more interested in seeing exactly what she did wrong and right and where the flaws come from.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2019 21:05
|
|
|
Also while I’ve read little of EL James’ stuff, something many people have noted is that the writing by Meyer is far more competent outside the rape.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2019 13:58
|
|
|
quote:I didn’t sleep well that night, even after I was done crying. The constant whooshing of the rain and wind across the roof wouldn’t fade into the background. I pulled the faded old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too. But I couldn’t fall asleep until after midnight, when the rain finally settled into a quieter drizzle. I would love to sleep to rain and wake up on a cold morning! Phoenix must really mess people up. quote:Breakfast with Charlie was a quiet event. He wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid me. Charlie left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family. After he left, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three unmatching chairs and examined his small kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor. Nothing was changed. My mother had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house. Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by the procession of my school pictures up to last year’s. Those were embarrassing to look at—I would have to see what I could do to get Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I was living here. I can't really blame him. As we later learn, Charlie was an only child and a bit of an outcast who spent much of his time caring for his older parents. Their relationship struggled not because of any inherent problems between them, but because of the stress of his parents' conditions and Renee suffering from clinical depression. She divorced the poor man and took Bella somewhere sunny, with him too upset and spending too much time caring for his parents to contest it. This is where you have to be really cautious as a writer. Everyone wants to make a flawed protagonist and especially wants someone who starts out with major issues and slowly overcomes them to become a better person, but you have to fight to make sure they remain likable and aren't being really lovely to people who don't deserve it. While Meyer wants to play up Bella's estrangement from her father, the fact of the matter is that Charlie is a nice guy who's gone through terrible poo poo and has continued to try and be a father despite his ex-wife having a ton of issues. Opening up with Bella being such a depressing brat only serves to make her aggravating, especially if you go in knowing that there's not some terrible secret about why she hates living with him. quote:I didn’t want to be too early to school, but I couldn’t stay in the house anymore. I donned my jacket—which had the feel of a biohazard suit—and headed out into the rain. For someone from Arizona, you'd think Meyer would be familiar with how cold Arizona gets in the winter. You're not exactly getting snow in Phoenix but you're gonna be wearing a jacket. quote:It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eave by the door, and locked up. The sloshing of my new waterproof boots was unnerving. I missed the normal crunch of gravel as I walked. I couldn’t pause and admire my truck again as I wanted; I was in a hurry to get out of the misty wet that swirled around my head and clung to my hair under my hood.  The real Swan house was built in 1935 in St. Helens, OR at 184 6th Street. The filmmakers repainted and fixed up the property to resemble the books better, leading the owner at the time to decide to keep the changes made. The house was put on the market and sold in September 2018 for $363,000. quote:Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Billy or Charlie had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. The engine started quickly, to my relief, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. Well, a truck this old was bound to have a flaw. The antique radio worked, a plus that I hadn’t expected.  Here's the real school. At the time of the book only about half of this modern campus was finished; the rest wouldn't be done until 2012.  Real high schools in small towns are obviously very dull places, so the film found a more dramatic (and desaturated) building in Kalama High School in Kalama, WA. Because Kalama has an even smaller population than Forks, the campus is used for all grades in town and they just use the cafeteria and such at different times. Much of the filming for the school scenes was actually done on green screen. quote:I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading FRONT OFFICE. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges. I took a deep breath before opening the door. This is another thing Meyer claims to have taken from real life. Scottsdale is an upper class spa and resort town notorious for its club and party scene, as well as having the highest number of destination spas per capita! Provo, where she went to college, is half the size and obviously far more conservative (88.7% Mormon as of 2000). quote:I looked at the map in the truck, trying to memorize it now; hopefully I wouldn’t have to walk around with it stuck in front of my nose all day. I stuffed everything in my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and sucked in a huge breath. I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck. A teenage girl in Washington wearing a black rain jacket doesn't stand out? Say it ain't so! quote:Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black “3” was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats through the door.  Poor Eric was played by Justin Chon, who was 27 at the time the first film was shot (Kristen Stewart was a nearly accurate 18, and Robert Pattinson 22). Chon would later star in Gook, a drama about the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the violent defense of Korean-owned stores. quote:We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn’t getting paranoid. Just interjecting here to point out that Meyer does this a lot, and it's a typical mistake among new writers. Beginning writers are often told with an almost obsessive bent to stop using "said" and to find more descriptive words to describe someone's tone of voice or intention. But it's also easily possible to overdo it and start filling your text with extraneous information that any reader could figure out from context or may not need at all; this sequence could easily work without any "he wondered" or "I told him" at all. In the worst cases your attempts at having a wide vocabulary get too flowery and you start describing people as ejaculating mid-sentence. quote:“Sunny,” I told him. Despite her fears that she's going to somehow be a freak that stands out to everyone, Bella immediately has seven people all chatting with her at lunch. She's having an easier time than most at making friends on her first day! quote:It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnuhVE4d2D4 One of the biggest points of criticism for the movie (and most hated by Robert and Kristen) was the acting directions given. In particular, Pattinson recognized how utterly creepy his character was and played it up. The use of older actors does help them stand out the way they're supposed to in the text. quote:They were all looking away—away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray—unopened soda, unbitten apple—and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer’s step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging. The last paragraph is awkwardly written, but Meyer is actually somewhat ahead of the amateur writer curve here. If you already know Edward's secret and why he's looking around like this, you can recognize that Meyer had already decided on one of the main characteristics of his powers and wrote it in before it was told to us in the text. Far too many writers go by the seat of their pants so much that they don't go back and edit anything in to match later decisions they've made. quote:My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.  In another case of "Appeared in Twilight before they got famous", Jessica was played by a 23-year-old Anna Kendrick. Kendrick's autobiography Scrappy Little Nobody talks at length about her time filming the series; apparently it was miserably cold and rainy all the time and it kept everyone in a permanent bad mood. quote:“They are… very nice-looking.” I struggled with the conspicuous understatement. Bella notes that the Cullens and Hales are just staring at the walls, not touching their food. She asks how long they've been in Forks and it turns out they just moved in from probably Alaska about 2 years before. quote:As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation. Meyer goes so far as to include this unknown characterization twice in the first chapter! quote:“Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?” I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today—he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.  Poor, poor Robert Pattinson. For all the hate the series gets, nobody hates it more than the man who became a millionaire portraying its lead. While he's calmed down lately and has come to better appreciate people's enjoyment of the series, he suffered for years from a creepy character that he couldn't stand playing, bafflingly pretentious filmmaking decisions like putting a stiff wire in his shirt collar to get the exact level of dishevelment for the camera, and obsessive fans never leaving him alone. He hated Edward Cullen from the first moment he read the book and nearly got fired due to intentionally playing up his emo scowling. He's fortunately managed to turn his career around with a number of critically acclaimed roles in Good Time and The Lighthouse, with the controversial decision recently announced to have him star as the new Batman. Only time will tell how he accomplishes it. quote:I bit my lip to hide my smile.  Kristen Stewart did a lot of lip biting in the movies. It gets rightly made fun of. quote:Then I glanced at him again. His face was turned away, but I thought his cheek appeared lifted, as if he were smiling, too. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Apr 18, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2019 16:26
|
|
|
quote:I sat at the table with Jessica and her friends longer than I would have if I’d been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me that her name was Angela, had Biology II with me the next hour. We walked to class together in silence. She was shy, too. If you actually behaved like an adult, Bella, people wouldn't have to constantly remind you of their name.  Angela was played by 17-year-old Christian Serratos, one of the extremely few high school actors to actually be the correct age for the character. She had previously gained minor fame among children for playing Suzie Crabgrass on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide and would later gain a regular role as Rosita on The Walking Dead, being bumped up to the main credits after the writers killed off most of the older characters that people remembered. I'm actually not sure if any of the Asian or Hispanic characters in the movies were meant to be so in the books. None of them have an ethnic name or anything about their appearance described in more than the barest sense (Eric's last name is Yorkie), so I think Meyer was just envisioning a bunch of white people before the casting director decided to diversify it a bit. quote:When we entered the classroom, Angela went to sit at a black-topped lab table exactly like the ones I was used to. She already had a neighbor. In fact, all the tables were filled but one. Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat. I know Meyer probably meant his hair color, but I can't help but imagine that she's recognizing Robert Pattinson's ridiculous bouffant. quote:As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my slip signed, I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face—it was hostile, furious. I looked away quickly, shocked, going red again. I stumbled over a book in the walkway and had to catch myself on the edge of a table. The girl sitting there giggled. I feel like it would be hard to tell if someone's eyes are literally black? Especially if they're not being directly lit and you're only seeing them while passing, very dark brown eyes would look indistinguishable from black. quote:Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book with no nonsense about introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had no choice but to send me to the one open seat in the middle of the room. I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by him, bewildered by the antagonistic stare he’d given me. Another case of Meyer using too many words and keeping the scene from really flowing. I get the feeling the length of the book that caused it to get rejected by publishers was because she kept using adjectives and excess prose. quote:I didn’t look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my hair. It smelled like strawberries, the scent of my favorite shampoo. It seemed an innocent enough odor. I let my hair fall over my right shoulder, making a dark curtain between us, and tried to pay attention to the teacher. Real good start to a romantic relationship! quote:The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like he wasn’t breathing. What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behavior? I questioned my judgment on Jessica’s bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I’d thought. Robert Pattinson was threatened with firing for playing Edward as too sullen and angry, so they sent him a copy of the book with every case of Edward smiling highlighted. He sent the book back with every case of him scowling highlighted. Power move. quote:At that moment, the bell rang loudly, making me jump, and Edward Cullen was out of his seat. Fluidly he rose—he was much taller than I’d thought—his back to me, and he was out the door before anyone else was out of their seat. First, Meyer is again putting in unnecessary text like "a humiliating tendency" that just brings everything crashing to a halt. Second, this only serves to make Bella seem even more self-centered than she already has been. All he's done is just look really mad and not talk to you! That's not worth crying over, especially when every other person you've met has been tripping over themselves to be your friend! quote:“Aren’t you Isabella Swan?” a male voice asked. I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced boy, his pale blond hair carefully gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously didn’t think I smelled bad.  Mike was played by 21-year-old Michael Welch, who played Luke on Joan of Arcadia when he was a teenager. He's been a regular face on TV since he appeared on an episode of Frasier in 1998 and starred as Mack on Z Nation. quote:We walked to class together; he was a chatterer—he supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. He’d lived in California till he was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my English class also. He was the nicest person I’d met today. Keep in mind every time Bella stresses about the weird kid not liking her that not only has literally every person she's met in this book befriended her instantly, but she's already got a guy crushing on her on day one! For someone who's supposed to be an outcast who's not like the other girls, she sure is instantly popular. quote:The Gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform but didn’t make me dress down for today’s class. At home, only two years of P.E. were required. Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth. Not in a universe where everyone loves you on sight! quote:The door opened again, and the cold wind suddenly gusted through the room, rustling the papers on the desk, swirling my hair around my face. The girl who came in merely stepped to the desk, placed a note in the wire basket, and walked out again. But Edward Cullen’s back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at me—his face was absurdly handsome—with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind. He turned back to the receptionist. Imagine being a young actor, fresh off a major role in a Harry Potter movie, being told that you're going to play the lead in the adaptation of one of the biggest young adult books in the world. And when you go to research your character the first impression you get of him is this, and also you get to be put in corpse makeup all day. quote:I went meekly to the desk, my face white for once instead of red, and handed her the signed slip. It was one dude Bella! Your first day went better than anyone's first day ever!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2019 14:59
|
|
|
Ripley posted:You're not wrong about the writing style, it feels very 'new writer'. Strange to see Bella devastated by this terrible first day at school, when she actually had multiple people falling over themselves to show her around (while she barely made an effort to remember their names). Reading ahead into the next chapter, it's astounding how rapidly Bella grates on you. The beginning of the first chapter gives you the sense that she really is going to be an outcast struggling with school, but on her first day she's already ahead of every lesson (except for being clumsy in PE) and everyone except one weird dude is gathering around to be her friend. She, of course, goes ballistic over this one guy being rude in class and acts like it's some kind of traumatic experience. Bella also exhibits so many Mary Sue traits that it's almost stereotypical: * Actually attractive but describes her features in ways that make them seem like flaws, then gets surprised when people think she's pretty. * Everyone trips over themselves trying to love her, even if she seems to show disdain for them and is supposed to be shy and socially awkward. * Based on the author's appearance, past, and personality (or their own perception thereof) * Has a cool, exotic name * Is immediately established as being superior to everyone else (already having read every book for English class and being more advanced in Biology) but has a small flaw like clumsiness so she's not perfect. * Has unique abilities or traits that set her apart, serving as the entire reason for the plot and ensuring that it revolves around her even if she doesn't actually do anything. What amazes me is this is published literature. These traits, taken together, would be considered a joke about the worst kind of Sue you could create, that nobody would ever make such an obvious stereotype. But not only is Bella the stereotype, she's in a series that's made the author millions!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2019 17:16
|
|
|
Gonna be fun to get to New Moon because I just read a list of how Bella fits 20/20 traits on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, something even Edward Cullen didn't accomplish.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2019 18:27
|
|
|
MorgaineDax posted:Pattinson spent the entire commentary tracks for the DVDs completely making fun of the entire thing and himself. Some of it honestly rivals the Rifftrax. This made me look up a pic of the three of them: 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2019 13:48
|
|
|
Chapter 2: Open Bookquote:The next day was better... and worse. After spending the first chapter acting like the most ungrateful bitch to ever walk the Earth, Bella is beginning the second chapter by insulting a friendly guy for being a nerd! quote:It was worse because I was tired; I still couldn’t sleep with the wind echoing around the house. It was worse because Mr. Varner called on me in Trig when my hand wasn’t raised and I had the wrong answer. It was miserable because I had to play volleyball, and the one time I didn’t cringe out of the way of the ball, I hit my teammate in the head with it. And it was worse because Edward Cullen wasn’t in school at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4HcWtTlrWg The volleyball incident is actually depicted in the movie and used as her introduction to the friend group. You can see the pain in Anna Kendrick's eyes. quote:All morning I was dreading lunch, fearing his bizarre glares. Part of me wanted to confront him and demand to know what his problem was. While I was lying sleepless in my bed, I even imagined what I would say. But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator. Oh come the gently caress on. One guy acted like a jerk to you and you spent all night cowering and crying in bed about having to deal with it? quote:But when I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica—trying to keep my eyes from sweeping the place for him, and failing entirely—I saw that his four siblings of sorts were sitting together at the same table, and he was not with them. You don't have to "do anything" about a guy having a crush on you! quote:I was relieved that I had the desk to myself, that Edward was absent. I told myself that repeatedly. But I couldn’t get rid of the nagging suspicion that I was the reason he wasn’t there. It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn’t stop worrying that it was true. Shouldn't you be happy? Him being there managed to ruin your entire goddamn life in one fell swoop, so you'd think you'd be fine with him not showing up the next day. quote:When the school day was finally done, and the blush was fading out of my cheeks from the volleyball incident, I changed quickly back into my jeans and navy blue sweater. I hurried from the girls’ locker room, pleased to find that I had successfully evaded my retriever friend for the moment. I walked swiftly out to the parking lot. It was crowded now with fleeing students. I got in my truck and dug through my bag to make sure I had what I needed. Knowing now that Charlie spent so much time caring for his elderly parents and basically got abandoned by his nutty wife, I feel sorry for him. He probably never had the chance to learn how to cook. quote:I gunned my deafening engine to life, ignoring the heads that turned in my direction, and backed carefully into a place in the line of cars that were waiting to exit the parking lot. As I waited, trying to pretend that the earsplitting rumble was coming from someone else’s car, I saw the two Cullens and the Hale twins getting into their car. It was the shiny new Volvo. Of course. I hadn’t noticed their clothes before—I’d been too mesmerized by their faces. Now that I looked, it was obvious that they were all dressed exceptionally well; simply, but in clothes that subtly hinted at designer origins. With their remarkable good looks, the style with which they carried themselves, they could have worn dishrags and pulled it off. It seemed excessive for them to have both looks and money. But as far as I could tell, life worked that way most of the time. It didn’t look as if it bought them any acceptance here. Bella is a Mary Sue par excellence, but the Cullens and her relationship with them amplify it. They're a family of supernaturally hot, immortal, badass rich people that she desperately tries to get involved with.  Edward's car was intended in the novel as a silver 2005 Volvo S60 R, a relatively sedate luxury sedan that wouldn't stand out in a parking lot unless you knew that it cost over $47,000 new with all the options. Meyer's brothers are gearheads and helped her with picking cars for the series.  The film replaced this with a 2008 Volvo C30 T5, which had a base price of only $25,000 but looked a little more unique. quote:They looked at my noisy truck as I passed them, just like everyone else. I kept my eyes straight forward and was relieved when I finally was free of the school grounds. I was going to say something about Bella continuing to be a whiny brat, but I just noticed how few contractions Bella's internal monologue uses. It doesn't sound natural. quote:When I got home, I unloaded all the groceries, stuffing them in wherever I could find an open space. I hoped Charlie wouldn’t mind. I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them in the oven to bake, covered a steak in marinade and balanced it on top of a carton of eggs in the fridge. This is another aspect of Meyer's unnecessary padding. Learning about exactly where the steak is marinating in the fridge and what clothes Bella is changing into just adds words without really adding anything to the scene or her character. That's not to say you shouldn't talk about it! Going back to my ongoing James Bond thread, Fleming was notorious for filling the books with luscious descriptions of food, clothes, technology, etc. Along with being an experienced writer and far better wordsmith than Meyer, it served a few purposes. For one, the books were essentially travelogues introducing the reader (originally Brits still living under rationing in the early 1950s) to exotic places and foods that they wouldn't even be able to buy in the whole country, let alone find at a local grocery store. The other benefit is that he used it to build the characters. Bond's tastes are elegant but understated and he's a man who knows what he likes. He'll have a breakfast of nothing but a hard boiled egg, toast with spreads, and coffee, but Fleming namedrops premium brands and specific stores and a Chemex coffee maker to showcase that while the food seems plain Bond is very particular and exacting in what he wants. When Bond orders scrambled eggs at a 24/7 diner in Jacksonville, he comments on how they'll probably be made with milk to stretch them and come out poorly for it. Hugo Drax, like all important characters, gets multiple paragraphs describing his exact appearance. The brand of watch he wears is obscenely expensive and his clothes are fashionable, showing off his wealth, but is contrasted by his scarred appearance. Bond's clothing, by contrast, has him wearing loafers to a millionaire's club; this would be a faux pas due to how casual they were in 1950s Britain, but it shows how he picked up the American habit with his loaned clothes in Live and Let Die without outright saying it. Ironically Meyer would be better to use more words in some cases! Maybe Bella wears cheap Walmart clothes a size too big and hasn't changed her fashion sense in years because she doesn't really put stock in her appearance or fitting in after growing up around wealthier, more athletic people. Maybe the recipe for the steak is something she learned from her mom, which can lead into her thinking about the implications of making it for her estranged father. Instead, Meyer finds a sort of weird in-between place where she uses just enough description to pad out the book with pointless details that don't say anything about the characters or scene. quote:“Bella,” my mom wrote… Yes, this is how it's formatted in the Kindle copy. I'm guessing that's how she wrote it for the regular published version too, which is awful to read. quote:I had decided to read Wuthering Heights—the novel we were currently studying in English—yet again for the fun of it, and that’s what I was doing when Charlie came home. I’d lost track of the time, and I hurried downstairs to take the potatoes out and put the steak in to broil. I can think of a lot of people who were wishing otherwise. quote:“What’s for dinner?” he asked warily. My mother was an imaginative cook, and her experiments weren’t always edible. I was surprised, and sad, that he seemed to remember that far back. Is your dad a goldfish, Bella? 16 years isn't exactly long enough to forget everything about living with your wife! quote:“Steak and potatoes,” I answered, and he looked relieved. This reminds me of those stories people have written where they're an outsider encountering a Mary Sue in their story and are baffled and terrified by everyone around them suddenly falling in love with them and defending everything about them. There's a reason later for why he had such an outburst about the Cullens being awesome, but it's a bit shaky. quote:I backpedaled. “They seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves. They’re all very attractive,” I added, trying to be more complimentary. Let's not forget from here on out that Bella spent a goddamn week with anxiety over a dude who was kinda weird and rude to her on her first day not coming back to school. quote:My first weekend in Forks passed without incident. Charlie, unused to spending time in the usually empty house, worked most of the weekend. I cleaned the house, got ahead on my homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful e-mail. I did drive to the library Saturday, but it was so poorly stocked that I didn’t bother to get a card; I would have to make a date to visit Olympia or Seattle soon and find a good bookstore. I wondered idly what kind of gas mileage the truck got… and shuddered at the thought. Bella did you seriously loving think that snow actually fell in big flakes where you could see every single one? quote:Mike laughed. And then a big, squishy ball of dripping snow smacked into the back of his head. We both turned to see where it came from. I had my suspicions about Eric, who was walking away, his back toward us—in the wrong direction for his next class. Mike apparently had the same notion. He bent over and began scraping together a pile of the white mush. Losing her virginity is going to be one awkward moment then. quote:He just nodded, his eyes on Eric’s retreating figure. Have we managed to find a single thing Bella hasn't complained about at least once? I think just the steak and potatoes. quote:I walked alertly to the cafeteria with Jessica after Spanish. Mush balls were flying everywhere. I kept a binder in my hands, ready to use it as a shield if necessary. Jessica thought I was hilarious, but something in my expression kept her from lobbing a snowball at me herself. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jun 26, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2019 16:14
|
|
|
The_White_Crane posted:
Somehow Bond manages to be more likable! He's a misogynist racist with rape tendencies, but at least he's interesting and has a sense of humor. You could go out and slam a few drinks with him, but Bella would just awkwardly insult you and then complain all day about how mean you were for splitting the bill. The most astonishing thing is that when we get to the Fifty Shades books and The Mister you'll be loving begging to have Bella and Edward back again. EL James has a real knack for pairing lame women with fake "strength" with monstrous sociopaths.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2019 16:42
|
|
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUN!
|
Reading another sporking of the book, it was pointed out that despite supposedly needing to keep a low profile the Cullen kids do everything possible to stand out instead. They show up to school in designer clothes and an expensive car, buy a bunch of food they don't eat, and just stare at the walls before dumping the food and disappearing.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2019 16:56
|
|
|
PsychedelicWarlord posted:Wuthering Heights is a great story about how Heathcliff ruins everyone's life but people persist in trying to label it a love story. I doubt Meyer is familiar with it beyond the obvious plot. She was accidentally right anyway, as Edward is an abusive stalker and Bella can credibly be called a sociopath.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2019 23:09
|
|
|
quote:Jessica pulled on my arm. A lot! quote:“Nothing,” I answered. “I’ll just get a soda today.” I caught up to the end of the line. Get used to Bella's "all about me" stance on the world. It doesn't go away. quote:Ridiculous. I shouldn’t have to run away. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen! quote:I kept my head down and glanced up under my lashes. None of them were looking this way. I lifted my head a little. Okay you don't have to do it three times, Meyer. Twice was enough. quote:“Edward Cullen is staring at you,” Jessica giggled in my ear. Isn't she lovely? quote:Mike interrupted us then—he was planning an epic battle of the blizzard in the parking lot after school and wanted us to join. Jessica agreed enthusiastically. The way she looked at Mike left little doubt that she would be up for anything he suggested. I kept silent. I would have to hide in the gym until the parking lot cleared. Her Inner Goddess is really lame. quote:I didn’t really want to walk to class with Mike as usual—he seemed to be a popular target for the snowball snipers—but when we went to the door, everyone besides me groaned in unison. It was raining, washing all traces of the snow away in clear, icy ribbons down the side of the walkway. I pulled my hood up, secretly pleased. I would be free to go straight home after Gym. He's just trying to fit in with you! quote:Once inside the classroom, I saw with relief that my table was still empty. Mr. Banner was walking around the room, distributing one microscope and box of slides to each table. Class didn’t start for a few minutes, and the room buzzed with conversation. I kept my eyes away from the door, doodling idly on the cover of my notebook. Forks is a town of over 3000 people. It's sure as hell not tiny enough that everyone knows everyone to the point where the police chief's estranged daughter coming home is going to be the talk of the town. Meyer has lived her entire life in large cities as far as I know, so I think her idea of what small town life is like comes from Gilmore Girls. quote:“No,” I persisted stupidly. “I meant, why did you call me Bella?” This is definitely information we needed to have, right? Totally not a way to get this book to 130,000 words? quote:“Ladies first, partner?” Edward asked. I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so beautiful that I could only stare at him like an idiot. Has there been a single subject in this school that Bella hasn't already done and mastered? quote:My assessment was confident. “Prophase.” Why are you disappointed? Were you hoping he'd be wrong so you could show off? quote:“Slide three?” I held out my hand without looking at him. Riveting. quote:We were finished before anyone else was close. I could see Mike and his partner comparing two slides again and again, and another group had their book open under the table. Bella is a smart, straight-A student. All of her poor decisions are due to her personality. quote:“It’s too bad about the snow, isn’t it?” Edward asked. I had the feeling that he was forcing himself to make small talk with me. Paranoia swept over me again. It was like he had heard my conversation with Jessica at lunch and was trying to prove me wrong. We're still going with this? quote:“Not really,” I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else. I was still trying to dislodge the stupid feeling of suspicion, and I couldn’t concentrate. That's not a really demanding question, Bella. It's pretty casual small talk. quote:“It’s… complicated.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc1UqeHhjeo The acting is awful in this scene and they sound like they're suffering from asthma, but seeing this play out in person really nails how poorly this scene is written. It's like a romance written and acted out by bored high school kids who don't really want to be in drama class but need the extra credit. quote:“Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living.” I half-smiled. You've been doing a good job acting like a five-year-old so far! quote:“Am I wrong?” So far Edward has already managed to be more endearing than Bella simply by not being so gloomy. quote:“On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read.” Despite everything that I’d said and he’d guessed, he sounded like he meant it. Watching the video back again, Robert Pattinson actually compromised and smiled where it's noted in the book. It says a lot about the romance here that he still came out thinking Edward was so morose. quote:Mr. Banner called the class to order then, and I turned with relief to listen. I was in disbelief that I’d just explained my dreary life to this bizarre, beautiful boy who may or may not despise me. He’d seemed engrossed in our conversation, but now I could see, from the corner of my eye, that he was leaning away from me again, his hands gripping the edge of the table with unmistakable tension. I'm sure you still hurt his feelings! quote:“Cullen seemed friendly enough today,” he commented as we shrugged into our raincoats. He didn’t seem pleased about it. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Mar 1, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2019 14:35
|
|
|
Chapter 3: Phenomenonquote:When I opened my eyes in the morning, something was different. I'm waiting for the day Bella wakes up and doesn't immediately complain about it. quote:Charlie had left for work before I got downstairs. In a lot of ways, living with Charlie was like having my own place, and I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely. As I said before, this was something Meyer said was taken from her real experience moving on to Provo. As she seems like she was probably an attractive young woman, I'm wondering if the apparent sudden interest in her when she went to college has less to do with Scottsdale being too full of hot tan blondes and more to do with Provo being a very conservative Mormon city and Meyer gaining the confidence and maturity that's typical of young people leaving high school and growing up. quote:My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. I drove very slowly, though, not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street. It says a lot about Bella that her mom has been basically useless to the point where she's had to be the adult of the household, but she can't stand the dad who clearly loves her and even went so far as to demand that he spend money on expensive California vacations during his visitation months. And after all that, he still does everything he can to help her and care for her. What I'm saying is Charlie Swan doesn't deserve to be in this series. quote:I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on, when I heard an odd sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpcwhWgWfCc The reveal of Edward's vampiric speed and strength in the movie quickly reveals the film's low budget, with quick cuts used to disguise the bizarre physics that lead to the van suddenly sliding at a perfect 90 degree angle after a swerve. It does fit the Mary Sue angle in that everyone immediately crowds around the completely uninjured Bella while ignoring the man bleeding from his head. quote:“I’m fine.” My voice sounded strange. I tried to sit up, and realized he was holding me against the side of his body in an iron grasp. Yeah, why does he sound like that? quote:“How in the…” I trailed off, trying to clear my head, get my bearings. “How did you get over here so fast?” How long do you think a compilation of every time Bella complained or whined would be? quote:“You were over there,” I suddenly remembered, and his chuckle stopped short. “You were by your car.” Huh. That was surprisingly easy. quote:It took six EMTs and two teachers—Mr. Varner and Coach Clapp—to shift the van far enough away from us to bring the stretchers in. Edward vehemently refused his, and I tried to do the same, but the traitor told them I’d hit my head and probably had a concussion. I almost died of humiliation when they put on the neck brace. It looked like the entire school was there, watching soberly as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance. Edward got to ride in the front. It was maddening. Bella you could literally die if you smack your head on the asphalt hard enough. Just accept the drat paramedics. quote:To make matters worse, Chief Swan arrived before they could get me safely away. Imagine the level of selfishness to be ungrateful for someone saving your life. quote:They put me in the emergency room, a long room with a line of beds separated by pastel-patterned curtains. A nurse put a pressure cuff on my arm and a thermometer under my tongue. Since no one bothered pulling the curtain around to give me some privacy, I decided I wasn’t obligated to wear the stupid-looking neck brace anymore. When the nurse walked away, I quickly unfastened the Velcro and threw it under the bed. And then she learned that she had an undiagnosed clavicle fracture from hitting the pavement! quote:There was another flurry of hospital personnel, another stretcher brought to the bed next to me. I recognized Tyler Crowley from my Government class beneath the bloodstained bandages wrapped tightly around his head. Tyler looked a hundred times worse than I felt. But he was staring anxiously at me.  Tyler was played by 18-year-old Gregory Tyree Boyce. He's one of the few actors with a speaking role in the series to cease professional acting entirely after the first movie; he has no IMDB credits except appearing in the music video for Trevor Jackson's "Apocalypse". quote:“Bella, I’m so sorry!” I'd be fine with Bella not being injured if she hadn't been so overtly dismissive of health care professionals trying to make sure she's all right. It's their responsibility to take all precautions necessary to get you diagnosed and X-rayed to ensure that there's no damage that can't be seen or felt at a glance. Something like flinging off your neck brace is not only dangerous to your health, but insulting and aggravating to the people taking care of you. And dismissing someone much more severely injured and traumatized from nearly killing a classmate as an annoyance is jaw-droppingly selfish. quote:“Is she sleeping?” a musical voice asked. My eyes flew open. I did a quick Ctrl+F for the word "complain" on a full text of the book. The verb form is used 8 times, 6 of which are describing how Bella is speaking. quote:“It’s all about who you know,” he answered. “But don’t worry, I came to spring you.”  Dr. Carlisle Cullen, the dreamboat of the series for all the middle-aged women, was played by Peter Facinelli. He's predominately a TV actor, appearing as Maxwell Lord on Supergirl and Dr. Fitch Cooper on Nurse Jackie. He initially declined the role when his agent offered, thinking it was going to be a gory vampire movie, but decided to take it after reading the book. Apparently he's a fan! quote:“So, Miss Swan,” Dr. Cullen said in a remarkably appealing voice, “how are you feeling?” "Medium-rare." quote:“Not really.” I’d had worse. I know Edward gets all the hate for being a stalker and everything, but so far he's been a much more appealing character than Bella. quote:“Actually,” Dr. Cullen corrected, “most of the school seems to be in the waiting room.” In a normal universe they'd all be there for the guy who's traumatized and far more injured rather than the girl he didn't even hit. quote:Dr. Cullen raised his eyebrows. “Do you want to stay?” While she's correct, I feel like this isn't enough information for her to decide that. quote:“I’m afraid that you’ll have to stay with us just a little bit longer,” he said to Tyler, and began checking his cuts. He's...not wrong. quote:I flinched back from the resentment in his voice. “You promised.” She is wrong. quote:He glared back. “What do you want from me, Bella?” This itself is a lie. In New Moon she lies and manipulates so much that it becomes her defining character trait. quote:“Can’t you just thank me and get over it?” While I like the "stare down a destroying angel" line on its surface, I'd rather it was used to refer to something other than being distracted from an argument by him being too gorgeous. quote:“Why did you even bother?” I asked frigidly. "You're honestly kind of a brat and haven't displayed any redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's baffling that I would have cared that much." quote:And then he turned his back on me and walked away. Charlie has mastered the Keanu hoverhand. quote:It was a huge relief—the first time I’d ever felt that way—to get into the cruiser. A very likable, relatable protagonist. We all want to be in her place. quote:My mom was in hysterics, of course. I had to tell her I felt fine at least thirty times before she would calm down. She begged me to come home—forgetting the fact that home was empty at the moment—but her pleas were easier to resist than I would have thought. I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented. And more than a little obsessed by Edward himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I wasn’t as eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be. Forks is fine! Jeeze. quote:I decided I might as well go to bed early that night. Charlie continued to watch me anxiously, and it was getting on my nerves. I stopped on my way to grab three Tylenol from the bathroom. They did help, and, as the pain eased, I drifted to sleep. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Jun 28, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2019 15:34
|
|
|
The_White_Crane posted:
Jesus Christ.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2019 16:39
|
|
|
PsychedelicWarlord posted:"“Why did you even bother?” I asked frigidly. And frankly even the "vegetarian" vampires should have some detachment. They never age, so they're moving constantly and should avoid forming attachments to anyone because they'll have to leave in a few years.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2019 17:38
|
|
|
Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:Bella being worried about the rest of the school's attention makes a little bit of sense to me because I moved twice in high school, both times to small towns, and never got to live down early incidents classmates saw as strange. Different states having drastically different curriculum is normal too, sadly. It doesn't make her any less insufferable a character, but Meyer has some decent bits mixed in and that's probably the most frustrating part so far. Where it falls apart is that the attention somehow starts long before she gets to school. Forks is a town of over 3000 people, hardly an "everyone knows everyone" place. Somehow the police chief's estranged daughter (who he's been seeing yearly anyway and used to come up to visit all the time until she whined enough that he started taking her to California instead) moving in with him right before she finishes high school is the talk of the town. Everyone she meets, from school administrators to students to teachers, already knows who she is when she arrives and some of them even gawk at her. That is not a newsworthy event! And all of it seems to come together in a way that ensures Bella is the center of attention. The curriculum is different, but always in a way that gives her an advantage. She's embarrassed by her arrival, but the whole drat school is practically tripping over themselves to befriend her as soon as she arrives and storms the hospital when she's nearly hit by a van to check on her. It's an extremely self-centered story even before you get into her uniqueness causing literally the entire plot to revolve around her existence.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2019 06:29
|
|
|
Chapter 4: Invitationsquote:In my dream it was very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Edward’s skin. I couldn’t see his face, just his back as he walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t catch up to him; no matter how loud I called, he never turned. Troubled, I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep again for what seemed like a very long time. After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach. You've been the center of attention the whole drat time, Bella! quote:Tyler Crowley was impossible, following me around, obsessed with making amends to me somehow. I tried to convince him what I wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it—especially since nothing had actually happened to me—but he remained insistent. He followed me between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table. Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him than they were to each other, which made me worry that I’d gained another unwelcome fan. Bella has been in school for a few weeks and already has three guys fighting over her in addition to Edward, but she's still supposed to be our awkward outcast. quote:No one seemed concerned about Edward, though I explained over and over that he was the hero—how he had pulled me out of the way and had nearly been crushed, too. I tried to be convincing. Jessica, Mike, Eric, and everyone else always commented that they hadn’t even seen him there till the van was pulled away. "Also if we start talking about him, that's less time we spend on you!" quote:I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause—no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful. I thought the Cullens were supposed to be so impossibly, ethereally beautiful that everyone pays attention to them even when they're not doing anything? quote:Edward was never surrounded by crowds of curious bystanders eager for his firsthand account. People avoided him as usual. The Cullens and the Hales sat at the same table as always, not eating, talking only among themselves. None of them, especially Edward, glanced my way anymore. But...this doesn't really mesh with how we were introduced to them? The Cullens are so shockingly gorgeous and pale that they instantly attract Bella's attention. Jessica knows enough about them to rattle off their names, relationships, and imply that just about every girl in the school has made a failed attempt at hooking up with Edward. But now everyone just completely avoids them and pays so little attention that they don't even notice Edward being involved in the crash? quote:When he sat next to me in class, as far from me as the table would allow, he seemed totally unaware of my presence. Only now and then, when his fists would suddenly ball up—skin stretched even whiter over the bones—did I wonder if he wasn’t quite as oblivious as he appeared. There's a lot of other conclusions you can come to! quote:I wanted very much to talk to him, and the day after the accident I tried. The last time I’d seen him, outside the ER, we’d both been so furious. I still was angry that he wouldn’t trust me with the truth, even though I was keeping my part of the bargain flawlessly. But he had in fact saved my life, no matter how he’d done it. And, overnight, the heat of my anger faded into awed gratitude. No better way to start a romance than to have both people ruin their first pleasant interaction with a fight and then stop talking to each other for a month. quote:Despite my outright lies, the tenor of my e-mails alerted Renée to my depression, and she called a few times, worried. I tried to convince her it was just the weather that had me down. Mike is too good for you. You might be noticing around this point that there's no Jacob. Jacob actually has a very small role in the first book and doesn't become part of the infamous love triangle until New Moon. It's actually the dorky blonde of all people who has to compete with Edward at first! You might also notice that Mike (as well as everyone else who's not a Swan or Cullen) has essentially no characterization. All of Bella's school friends are distinguished only by name and the attention they give her. quote:The snow washed away for good after that one dangerously icy day. Mike was disappointed he’d never gotten to stage his snowball fight, but pleased that the beach trip would soon be possible. The rain continued heavily, though, and the weeks passed. This is a really awkward way to write dialogue. quote:“No, Jess, I’m not going,” I assured her. Dancing was glaringly outside my range of abilities. Meyer repeatedly commits the common amateur's sin of calling out her own mistakes instead of fixing them. Instead of making a more realistic character that's actually as awkward and shy as Bella claims to be, where Edward's attention really is unusual, Meyer makes her self-insert protagonist the center of attention that everyone is obsessing over and just tries to do a "Haha, silly me!" Another place you can see it is Bella repeatedly calling herself out for making stupid decisions, like obsessing over wanting to see Edward again after their mild pleasantries in Biology. It makes it seem like Bella (and by extension the author) find it okay to repeatedly sin or make dumbass moves as long as you beat yourself up over it. She could just, you know, not keep acting deranged. quote:“You have fun with Mike,” I encouraged. Normally I would call out Bella for saying no because of her obsession with a guy who currently can't stand to be around her, but Mike and Jessica deserve better than her. quote:“Mike, I think you should tell her yes,” I said. Forks is a roughly 4-hour drive from Seattle on the other side of the Olympic National Park. It really is in the middle of nowhere. quote:“Can’t you go some other weekend?” So don't date him! quote:I tried very hard not to be aware of him for the rest of the hour, and, since that was impossible, at least not to let him know that I was aware of him. When the bell rang at last, I turned my back to him to gather my things, expecting him to leave immediately as usual. One of the more infamous pieces of Twilight history was Midnight Sun. Because Meyer doesn't really know what else to write, she began work on a rewrite of the original Twilight from Edward's point of view. Robert Pattinson and Catherine Hardwicke were actually given some chapters of the book that she had already completed to help with understanding Edward's unstated motivations during filming. In August 2008 (3 months before the film's release), someone Meyer had given an incomplete draft to leaked it online. Meyer promptly threw a tantrum and refused to finish the book, at least until everyone had forgotten about it. She was at least kind enough to put up the whole manuscript for free herself. Eventually Meyer decided to start writing again, but rather than finish Midnight Sun she wrote Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. This supremely lazy book is simply a gender-flipped repeat of the first one, with extremely few changes apart from swapping names (and some very telling changes of emotion and detail that have more than a few sexist implications). It actually got her interested in picking up her book about Edward again....and then she found out that EL James was releasing Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian. As she recounted at New York Comic-Con, this caused her to throw yet another tantrum and give up. Thanks to Midnight Sun, we can actually go and look at Edward's thoughts and motivations in any given scene. To spoil it a little, at this point the Cullen family has been debating whether or not they need to kill Bella to keep their secret. They already know of Edward's attraction to her and he's incredibly offended that Bella thinks he wishes she died, to the point where he starts wondering if she even thinks the same way normal humans do. quote:I turned my head sharply away from him, clenching my jaw against all the wild accusations I wanted to hurl at him. I gathered my books together, then stood and walked to the door. I meant to sweep dramatically out of the room, but of course I caught the toe of my boot on the doorjamb and dropped my books. I stood there for a moment, thinking about leaving them. Then I sighed and bent to pick them up. He was there; he’d already stacked them into a pile. He handed them to me, his face hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxeG3BBFLvY This scene takes place in the cafeteria in the movie. Yes, this video is the one with the best quality. Shut up. The apple trick took 26 takes, even with the apple on a string to pull it up. quote:Gym was brutal. We’d moved on to basketball. My team never passed me the ball, so that was good, but I fell down a lot. Sometimes I took people with me. Today I was worse than usual because my head was so filled with Edward. I tried to concentrate on my feet, but he kept creeping back into my thoughts just when I really needed my balance. I'm sure Bella will continue to whine about how much of a struggle it is to deal with Tyler while he's injured, traumatized, and dealing with his parents having to sell their van because of the accident. quote:I almost had a stroke when I rounded the corner and saw a tall, dark figure leaning against the side of my truck. Then I realized it was just Eric. I started walking again. That's two down. Can we get a third? quote:He slouched off, back toward the school. I heard a low chuckle. Bella what the gently caress? quote:I looked in my rearview mirror. A line was beginning to form. Directly behind me, Tyler Crowley was in his recently acquired used Sentra, waving. I was too aggravated to acknowledge him. And there we go! Every male character with lines as of this point who isn't an adult is in love with her! quote:This could not be happening. I'd like to say her dislike of him is understandable at this point, but I still have no clue why everyone is head over heels for her. She's been horribly rude and inconsiderate to pretty much everyone every day. quote:And before I could respond, he was walking back to his car. I could feel the shock on my face. I looked forward to see Alice, Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper all sliding into the Volvo. In his rearview mirror, Edward’s eyes were on me. He was unquestionably shaking with laughter, as if he’d heard every word Tyler had said. My foot itched toward the gas pedal… one little bump wouldn’t hurt any of them, just that glossy silver paint job. I revved the engine. Remember before when I said that there have been essays explaining why Bella Swan is a sociopath? It starts early. quote:But they were all in, and Edward was speeding away. I drove home slowly, carefully, muttering to myself the whole way. When I got home, I decided to make chicken enchiladas for dinner. It was a long process, and it would keep me busy. While I was simmering the onions and chilies, the phone rang. I was almost afraid to answer it, but it might be Charlie or my mom. Wow, it's a good thing that all of that buildup with everyone asking her to the dance happened! It really made the paragraph where they painlessly resolve everything matter so much more! This definitely has a bearing on the plot! quote:After I hung up, I tried to concentrate on dinner—dicing the chicken especially; I didn’t want to take another trip to the emergency room. But my head was spinning, trying to analyze every word Edward had spoken today. What did he mean, it was better if we weren’t friends? It's a good thing the entire rest of the school unconditionally loves you and your father would die for you no matter how bitchy you were to him, right? quote:Of course he wasn’t interested in me, I thought angrily, my eyes stinging—a delayed reaction to the onions. I wasn’t interesting. And he was. Interesting… and brilliant… and mysterious… and perfect… and beautiful… and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand. "I'm not interesting or beautiful! That's why everyone's lives revolve around me and my approval!" quote:Well, that was fine. I could leave him alone. I would leave him alone. I would get through my self-imposed sentence here in purgatory, and then hopefully some school in the Southwest, or possibly Hawaii, would offer me a scholarship. I focused my thoughts on sunny beaches and palm trees as I finished the enchiladas and put them in the oven. Imagine being this goddamn haughty about Mexican food. You're a loving 4-hour drive from Seattle and Tacoma, the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country and home to one of the most thriving cultural scenes in America. quote:“Dad?” I asked when he was almost done. Or the chances of you committing a road rage murder. quote:“Yes.” I would really love to know what the gently caress that means, Meyer. quote:“No—I don’t dance, Dad.” He, of all people, should understand that—I didn’t get my balance problems from my mother. But...we've never seen Charlie clumsy? Ever? quote:The next morning, when I pulled into the parking lot, I deliberately parked as far as possible from the silver Volvo. I didn’t want to put myself in the path of too much temptation and end up owing him a new car. Bella is shockingly, revoltingly violent. quote:Getting out of the cab, I fumbled with my key and it fell into a puddle at my feet. As I bent to get it, a white hand flashed out and grabbed it before I could. I jerked upright. Edward Cullen was right next to me, leaning casually against my truck. Yes, good. Keep roasting her. Someone in this book has to. quote:I scowled at his perfect face. His eyes were light again today, a deep, golden honey color. Then I had to look down, to reassemble my now-tangled thoughts. Oh get over yourself. quote:“Why the traffic jam last night?” I demanded, still looking away. “I thought you were supposed to be pretending I don’t exist, not irritating me to death.” Edward is the true hero of this book. quote:“And I’m not pretending you don’t exist,” he continued. "And also just the worst." quote:My palms tingled—I wanted so badly to hit something. I was surprised at myself. I was usually a nonviolent person. Are you, though? quote:I turned my back and started to walk away. How have you written a protagonist so terrible that it makes me love Edward "Abusive Stalker" Cullen? quote:“Why won’t you leave me alone?” I grumbled. That's actually a good point. Despite being much more endearing than our psychopathic protagonist, Edward's tone and mood swing practically sentence to sentence. Maybe it was Meyer's way of trying to write a vampire who's permanently a teenager and has some level of detachment from humanity, but it makes the romance even more confusing than having one member have no appealing qualities whatsoever. quote:“You’re doing it again.” You said it, not me. quote:I was still stunned. “Why?” Oh my God. This was a Captain Planet AU all along. quote:“Honestly, Edward.” I felt a thrill go through me as I said his name, and I hated it. “I can’t keep up with you. I thought you didn’t want to be my friend.” "But I need to keep this plot going against all reason, so...." quote:“Oh, thanks, now that’s all cleared up.” Heavy sarcasm. I realized I had stopped walking again. We were under the shelter of the cafeteria roof now, so I could more easily look at his face. Which certainly didn’t help my clarity of thought. ....th-then don't ask her out! chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jul 1, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2019 14:34
|
|
|
Reading through another sporking of the book concurrently, someone pointed out that during the van accident Bella has so much time to notice tons of inconsequential details (where Edward is, the expression on his face, the reactions of everyone else around him, and the exact angle the van was going to hit her truck and where she was in relation to both vehicles) that it implies she was standing and staring at the van for ages waiting for it to hit her. They compare it to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLlUgilKqms
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
HIJK posted:We have not truly reached the nadir of Bella Swan. Brace yourselves! Yeah, everything about New Moon says she jumps right off the cliff (hohohohoho) straight into manipulative, sociopathic behavior. There's actually a lot of attempts at diagnosing her. She convincingly fits Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and sociopathy/psychopathy depending on how you want to look at her. Regardless of what you pick, she remains an utterly awful person.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2019 16:39
|
|
|
Epicurius posted:"I didn't want to start a bad precedent by asking my dad if I, his 17 year old daughter who had an old car, could drive several hours away to a strange city alone." I actually kinda want to write a book like this now.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2019 21:40
|
|
|
Chapter 5: Blood Typequote:I made my way to English in a daze. I didn't even realize when I first walked in that class had already started. Why? Somehow you've managed to appeal to every single other person you've met in this book despite a total lack of redeeming qualities. The whole drat school left to check on you when you almost got hit by a van! quote:So I was impatient and frightened as Jessica and I entered the cafeteria. I wanted to see his face, to see if he’d gone back to the cold, indifferent person I’d known for the last several weeks. Or if, by some miracle, I’d really heard what I thought I’d heard this morning. Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans—Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together—completely unaware of my inattention. Do people seriously wink in real life? quote:“Does he mean you?” Jessica asked with insulting astonishment in her voice. This...is not the kind of thing you want a guy to say when he starts flirting with you. quote:I waited for him to say something that made sense. The seconds ticked by. Not if their entire existence revolves around you! quote:“I may not give you back, though,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. Uhhh quote:I gulped. I know Meyer probably meant this to sound predatory, but I don't think it sounds like it in the way she hoped it would. quote:“You lost me again.” Yeah, are we really going to rehash this for the fourth or fifth time in two chapters? quote:“Yes, because you’re not listening to me. I’m still waiting for you to believe it. If you’re smart, you’ll avoid me.” Another way to pad the word count: repeat conversations over and over because nobody gets it. quote:“I think you’ve made your opinion on the subject of my intellect clear, too.” My eyes narrowed. That's the smartest decision you've made so far, Bella. quote:“Won’t you tell me?” he asked, tilting his head to one side with a shockingly tempting smile. So is having you keep trying to make friends while insisting nobody should be friends with you! quote:“No,” I disagreed quickly, my eyes narrowing, “I can’t imagine why that would be frustrating at all—just because someone refuses to tell you what they’re thinking, even if all the while they’re making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean… now, why would that be frustrating?” Imagine if he knew she was seriously considering wrecking his car because of annoyance. quote:“I don’t like double standards.” *snorts* quote:We stared at each other, unsmiling. Because she's a sociopath faking complex emotions and care for other people? quote:I had to look away from the intensity of his stare. I concentrated on unscrewing the lid of my lemonade. I took a swig, staring at the table without seeing it. Why do I get the feeling the Cullens have to keep moving because they can't stop making coy references to being immortal vampires in front of people? quote:“Can you do me a favor?” I asked after a second of hesitation. Yes he will. quote:He looked down, and then glanced up at me through his long black lashes, his ocher eyes scorching. Or just crazy. quote:“That’s not very creative,” he scoffed. What does that even look like? quote:“But not bad,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No, I don’t believe that you’re bad.” I'm starting to like the movie more for cutting down on the obnoxious padding. This post is already long as hell and virtually nothing has happened! We're in the same conversation that we started the chapter in and we've barely learned anything or progressed the plot! quote:The silence lasted until I noticed that the cafeteria was almost empty. Give him a leather jacket and a cigarette, ladies! He's a bad boy. quote:“Well, I’m going,” I told him. I was far too big a coward to risk getting caught. Imagine going straight from reading James Bond to this. quote:So few questions had been answered in comparison to how many new questions had been raised. At least the rain had stopped. I wonder how long Meyer can drag this one out? quote:“Put a small drop of blood on each of the prongs.” He demonstrated, squeezing Mike’s finger till the blood flowed. I swallowed convulsively, my stomach heaving. I, uh, don't think that's exactly what it's like when you feel faint at the sight of blood. quote:“The Red Cross is having a blood drive in Port Angeles next weekend, so I thought you should all know your blood type.” He sounded proud of himself. “Those of you who aren’t eighteen yet will need a parent’s permission—I have slips at my desk.” See, Edward is already a bad influence on her! quote:“Can someone take Bella to the nurse, please?” he called. Remember this is the protagonist that Stephenie Meyer wants us to root for and enjoy reading about. quote:He helped me sit on the edge of the walk. How loving. quote:He chuckled. “I was taking her to the nurse,” Mike explained in a defensive tone, “but she wouldn’t go any farther.” I wonder how Bella has dealt with periods for so many years if she instantly faints from a single drop of blood on someone's finger. quote:I don’t know how he opened the door while carrying me, but it was suddenly warm, so I knew we were inside. "Cowards, we call them." quote:He muffled a snicker. “Just lie down for a minute, honey; it’ll pass.” Fantastic. quote:“Ditching is healthy.” I practiced breathing evenly. Mike doesn't have nearly enough personality to be revealed as a serial killer. quote:“Ha ha.” I still had my eyes closed, but I was feeling more normal every minute. Maybe that's why this book had the appeal it did. It's all for the kids who would ditch class to listen to My Chemical Romance. quote:I heard the door and opened my eyes to see the nurse with a cold compress in her hand. Bella just has a thing about running away from medical treatment. Actually, making that joke suddenly reminded me. Bella was in the hospital and Tyler's face was all sliced up from the crash, but she never once saw any blood or had a reaction to it? Maybe her annoyance at Tyler being guilty for nearly killing her overrode her weakness. quote:And then Mike staggered through the door, now supporting a sallow-looking Lee Stephens, another boy in our Biology class. Edward and I drew back against the wall to give them room. In case you were wondering, Lee Stephens is not in the movie. He makes a few intermittent appearances as a background character and never does anything. quote:“Oh no,” Edward muttered. “Go out to the office, Bella.” I think he's realizing the hospital plot hole too. quote:“What?” I asked. As we all know, pockets block smells. quote:“It’s not bleeding anymore,” he muttered. “Are you going back to class?” According to Midnight Sun, Edward is staring into space because he's utterly furious at Bella spending time with anyone else. quote:I tried to sound as friendly as possible. “Sure, I said I was in.” Our protagonist is a cowardly, clumsy sociopath in poor physical condition who passes out at the sight of one drop of blood (when narratively convenient). Bella is often criticized for lacking really any agency in the plot and just being someone that things happen to, and it's clear from the beginning that it's because Meyer wrote someone with absolutely zero tools to actually affect the narrative. quote:I heard Edward speaking softly at the counter. “Ms. Cope?” When a nearly century-old vampire in a 17-year-old's body is seducing a school nurse, which is the creepier one? quote:“No, I have Mrs. Goff, she won’t mind.” I won't disagree there. quote:“Anytime.” He was staring straight forward, squinting into the rain. When was the last time a teenager seriously said "Mike-schmike" as opposed to "Man, gently caress Mike"? quote:We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back. But her condition is fake! You were both acting! quote:“What condition? And what about my truck?” I complained. The word you're looking for is "abusive" Bella! quote:“It’s open,” was all he responded. He got in the driver’s side. "Hahaha, Mike is such a secret murderer. Also, get the gently caress in my car or I'll drag you in myself." quote:I tried to maintain what dignity I could as I got into his car. I wasn’t very successful—I looked like a half-drowned cat and my boots squeaked. No, most of the chapter preceding this was unnecessary. This is Ted Bundy's start of darkness. quote:He didn’t answer. He fiddled with the controls, turning the heater up and the music down. As he pulled out of the parking lot, I was preparing to give him the silent treatment—my face in full pout mode—but then I recognized the music playing, and my curiosity got the better of my intentions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY "Clair de Lune" is a pretty famous piano piece. Recognizing it isn't a tremendous achievement. quote:“Not well,” I admitted. “My mother plays a lot of classical music around the house—I only know my favorites.” Man, she forgets about being forced into a creepy guy's car real fast. quote:“What is your mother like?” he asked me suddenly. "More like twelve on a good day." quote:His tone was reproachful; it made me laugh. I think your mom was only saying that because she's permanently a child. I can't remind people enough that Renee Swan got married young, had a kid, and got bored with small town life and abandoned her husband while taking advantage of his depression and ailing parents to get primary custody of their daughter. She was then so useless that Bella was forced to take care of all the basic household tasks until she found a new husband who would coddle her. And somehow she's the one Bella sympathizes with, rather than her eternally put-upon father who continues to dote on her despite her whiny and demanding personality. quote:He made a face and changed the subject. I don't know if Renee is mentally capable of understanding her daughter having a relationship. quote:“I-I think so,” I stuttered. “But she’s the parent, after all. It’s a little bit different.” This entire sequence with the car has been right out of a serial killer playbook. Any sane girl would be diving out onto the highway right now. quote:I thought for a moment, wondering whether the truth or a lie would go over better. I decided to go with the truth. “Hmmm… I think you could be, if you wanted to.” You loving should be! quote:“So, now are you going to tell me about your family?” I asked to distract him. “It’s got to be a much more interesting story than mine.” The car you were physically forced into. quote:“And you probably want your truck back before Chief Swan gets home, so you don’t have to tell him about the Biology incident.” He grinned at me. Again, not that small of a town! quote:He laughed, and there was an edge to his laughter. To hide all the bodies! quote:“Oh, well, have fun.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. I don’t think I fooled him, though. A smile was playing around the edges of his lips. "It's less fun if I can't do it myself." quote:The helplessness had faded as he spoke. I glared at him. But she's not normally violent, right? quote:He was still smiling as he drove away.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2019 15:39
|
|
|
I'm kinda wanting to finish this series with Midnight Sun because it really explains why Robert Pattinson would have such a hatred of Edward. Being exposed to all of his internal thoughts reveals exactly what level of depravity being a vampire for almost 100 years has dropped him to. Basically, he's incapable of viewing humans as humans. While he has an obsessive love for Bella, he's utterly disconnected from just about every other human being at this point in the book. He not only considers himself a rival of Mike's, but actually fantasizes about ways of murdering him whenever he gets Bella's attention. As far as why he's forcing Bella into his car, he wanted to practice being close to her for an extended period of time without giving into the urge to kill her. Keep in mind that Edward is spending all of his scenes with Bella with the insatiable urge to murder her. This is a romance of a monster and a sociopath.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2019 19:45
|
|
|
Something noticeable with Midnight Sun as the "final" entry in the Twilight series is that Meyer's writing never really gets better. She's more capable of complex emotions and has learned more words, but her style of writing is still incredibly stilted and includes very awkward turns of phrase. It actually seems to get even worse at times because she's trying to emulate Edward's age with more archaic speech. Here's that final sequence from his perspective: quote:If I let her push for too many details, I would have to lie. I glanced at the clock, disheartened that my time with her was up. Keep in mind that no matter what Edward seemed like in the original book, this is what Robert Pattinson had in his head the whole time.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2019 21:56
|
|
|
Here's an even sketchier passage. It's almost a game to find places where both characters are being awful at the same time.quote:Mike Newton interrupted us then, entering the room with resentful, violent thoughts. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jul 3, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2019 00:06
|
|
|
PsychedelicWarlord posted:He's talked to her like three times at this point Bella’s the most inexplicable one here. Edward at least has the excuse of unusually strong hunger toward her blood. She had one mildly annoying incident on her first day and was sobbing and unable to sleep from it, then spent a whole week obsessing over him.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2019 07:33
|
|
|
Zore posted:Yeah, also having someone who's mind you can't read after 100+ years of being able to read everyone is actually a pretty strong hook for why he's obsessed with her. Like reading all the excerpts from the Edward POV book, Meyer is really pushing the idea that Edward can't actually function without the ability to read minds and is constantly misinterpreting everything about Bella because he can't cheat and get into her head like everyone else. As always, there’s a much better idea and story buried beneath her amateur writing and awful characterization.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2019 13:16
|
|
|
PsychedelicWarlord posted:A more interesting story would focus on how Edward is essentially a predator and the Cullens are really badly attempting to ape humanity with little success. There are also moral dilemmas with the Cullens: one of them is a surgeon but the rest just pretend to do high school instead of actually useful stuff. And they are aware of the vampires who are, uh, bad, but have a sort of don't ask don't tell policy toward widespread murder. I'm more casual with spoilers here because most of the really heinous poo poo (like "imprinting") is already well known in popular culture. I'd just put it behind spoiler tags.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2019 14:55
|
|
|
Chapter 6: Scary Storiesquote:As I sat in my room, trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth, I was really listening for my truck. I would have thought, even over the pounding rain, I could have heard the engine’s roar. But when I went to peek out the curtain—again—it was suddenly there. I checked Midnight Sun to see if there was any supernatural explanation like the Cullens carrying her truck to the driveway for no reason, but no. She just couldn't hear it over the rain. quote:I wasn’t looking forward to Friday, and it more than lived up to my non-expectations. Of course there were the fainting comments. Jessica especially seemed to get a kick out of that story. Luckily Mike had kept his mouth shut, and no one seemed to know about Edward’s involvement. She did have a lot of questions about lunch, though. As always, bad writing is okay if the characters make fun of it! quote:“You looked kind of mad,” she fished. Bella reminds me of those "I have an old soul!" girls who are really just sanctimonious about their immaturity. Virtually all of her female peers are shallower than thou and only care about gossip and boys. quote:The worst part about Friday was that, even though I knew he wasn’t going to be there, I still hoped. When I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica and Mike, I couldn’t keep from looking at his table, where Rosalie, Alice, and Jasper sat talking, heads close together. And I couldn’t stop the gloom that engulfed me as I realized I didn’t know how long I would have to wait before I saw him again. Also, blondes are pretty universally bitchy in this series. quote:That night at dinner, Charlie seemed enthusiastic about my trip to La Push in the morning. I think he felt guilty for leaving me home alone on the weekends, but he’d spent too many years building his habits to break them now. Of course he knew the names of all the kids going, and their parents, and their great-grandparents, too, probably. He seemed to approve. I wondered if he would approve of my plan to ride to Seattle with Edward Cullen. Not that I was going to tell him. Doo doo doo doo. quote:It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn’t seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun. Clouds ringed the horizon, but a large patch of blue was visible in the middle. I lingered by the window as long as I could, afraid that if I left the blue would disappear again. Ben, Conner, and Lauren never appear in the film as named characters. I don't think Ben or Conner ever do anything important except add flavor text to the background. quote:At least Mike was happy to see me. Stephenie Meyer is one of those authors that will make you hate the word "chagrin". It appears 24 times in the books, including 9 times in Midnight Sun alone, and she regularly misuses it as an adjective. quote:The numbers worked out in my favor, though. Lee brought two extra people, and suddenly every seat was necessary. I managed to wedge Jess in between Mike and me in the front seat of the Suburban. Mike could have been more graceful about it, but at least Jess seemed appeased. I wonder how many of Bella's traits were meant to make her the anti-vampire. Being afraid of blood, loving the sun.... quote:I’d been to the beaches around La Push many times during my Forks summers with Charlie, so the mile-long crescent of First Beach was familiar to me. It was still breathtaking. The water was dark gray, even in the sunlight, white-capped and heaving to the gray, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water’s edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but close up were every shade a stone could be: terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, dull gold. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves. First off, it's amazing how incredibly boring Meyer manages to make this sequence. You can tell what she had in her head, but it's written in such a matter-of-fact way. Second, this is correct. The salts in driftwood create lavender and blue flames when burned. The smoke is also toxic! quote:After a half hour of chatter, some of the boys wanted to hike to the nearby tidal pools. It was a dilemma. On the one hand, I loved the tide pools. They had fascinated me since I was a child; they were one of the only things I ever looked forward to when I had to come to Forks. On the other hand, I’d also fallen into them a lot. Not a big deal when you’re seven and with your dad. It reminded me of Edward’s request—that I not fall into the ocean. Spoilers: Bella later falls in the ocean. quote:Lauren was the one who made my decision for me. She didn’t want to hike, and she was definitely wearing the wrong shoes for it. Most of the other girls besides Angela and Jessica decided to stay on the beach as well. I waited until Tyler and Eric had committed to remaining with them before I got up quietly to join the pro-hiking group. Mike gave me a huge smile when he saw that I was coming. Lauren is a walking stereotype, from the blonde hair to the bitchiness toward the new girl to wearing fashion shoes for a hike. quote:The hike wasn’t too long, though I hated to lose the sky in the woods. The green light of the forest was strangely at odds with the adolescent laughter, too murky and ominous to be in harmony with the light banter around me. I had to watch each step I took very carefully, avoiding roots below and branches above, and I soon fell behind. Eventually I broke through the emerald confines of the forest and found the rocky shore again. It was low tide, and a tidal river flowed past us on its way to the sea. Along its pebbled banks, shallow pools that never completely drained were teeming with life. "I told you not to fall in the loving water." quote:Finally the boys were hungry, and I got up stiffly to follow them back. I tried to keep up better this time through the woods, so naturally I fell a few times. I got some shallow scrapes on my palms, and the knees of my jeans were stained green, but it could have been worse. It's really unfair of Bella to get pissed at Edward and try to damage his property for warning her not to kill herself on this hike when she can't even walk through the woods without repeatedly tripping. quote:When we got back to First Beach, the group we’d left behind had multiplied. As we got closer we could see the shining, straight black hair and copper skin of the newcomers, teenagers from the reservation come to socialize. The food was already being passed around, and the boys hurried to claim a share while Eric introduced us as we each entered the driftwood circle. Angela and I were the last to arrive, and, as Eric said our names, I noticed a younger boy sitting on the stones near the fire glance up at me in interest. I sat down next to Angela, and Mike brought us sandwiches and an array of sodas to choose from, while a boy who looked to be the oldest of the visitors rattled off the names of the seven others with him. All I caught was that one of the girls was also named Jessica, and the boy who noticed me was named Jacob. Awww poo poo here we go. quote:It was relaxing to sit with Angela; she was a restful kind of person to be around—she didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with chatter. She left me free to think undisturbed while we ate. And I was thinking about how disjointedly time seemed to flow in Forks, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. And then, at other times, every second was significant, etched in my mind. I knew exactly what caused the difference, and it disturbed me. Time feels so disjointed because Meyer skips over huge chunks of time. It feels almost like it's been a few weeks at most if you're not paying attention to the text, but we started this book in January and it's now March. The mysterious boy Bella has been obsessing over has interacted with her about half a dozen times in 3 months and several of those conversations have been outright hostile or involved physical abuse. quote:During lunch the clouds started to advance, slinking across the blue sky, darting in front of the sun momentarily, casting long shadows across the beach, and blackening the waves. As they finished eating, people started to drift away in twos and threes. Some walked down to the edge of the waves, trying to skip rocks across the choppy surface. Others were gathering a second expedition to the tide pools. Mike—with Jessica shadowing him—headed up to the one shop in the village. Some of the local kids went with them; others went along on the hike. By the time they all had scattered, I was sitting alone on my driftwood log, with Lauren and Tyler occupying themselves by the CD player someone had thought to bring, and three teenagers from the reservation perched around the circle, including the boy named Jacob and the oldest boy who had acted as spokesperson. Oh no, not those people who mistakenly use your full name! The worst humans!  The third member of our love triangle, 16-year-old Taylor Lautner was a child actor who infamously starred in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl in 3-D a few years earlier. He was initially interested mainly in martial arts and basketball as a child, but attended an Xtreme Martial Arts camp run by Michael Chaturantabut (the Blue Ranger on Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue) who encouraged him to take up acting. Many of his most famous roles as a youth were flops, but he choreographed his own fight scenes as Sharkboy thanks to his martial arts talent. Possibly because of some distant Native American ancestry on his mother's side, Lautner was cast in the relatively minor role of Jacob Black in the first movie. However, Jacob goes through serious physical changes in New Moon and the studio began looking at Michael Copon (who was a Blue Ranger himself in Power Rangers Time Force) to replace him with someone with a better physique. Unwilling to give up the role, Lautner extensively weight trained until he had a body that even made Robert Pattinson jealous. His youth led to some controversy over his sudden status as an underage sex symbol, including dating Taylor Swift for a few months when he was 17 and she was 20. Lautner has led a relatively low profile life, unlike his costars who went on to bigger and better things. He had a stint on Scream Queens and Cuckoo, but he seems content to mostly coast on his Twilight millions. He even still lives with his parents and hasn't really changed his daily routine. quote:“Bella,” I sighed. Bella mentions her childhood a few times. Many of her recollections serve to reinforce that yes, she has been a giant whiny brat her entire life. quote:“Are they here?” I examined the girls at the ocean’s edge, wondering if I would recognize them now. Despite the overall importance of the Black family in the plot, Rebecca and Rachel have practically nothing to do with it. Rachel is the only one to even appear physically later on. quote:“So how do you like the truck?” he asked. “I love it. It runs great.” Remember that she was going to try and drive this thing 4 hours one way down unfamiliar highways without a cellphone in an isolated area because she was too awkward to go to the school dance. quote:I couldn’t help grinning back. “It does great in a collision,” I offered in my truck’s defense. "I almost used it to smash up this guy's car because he irritated me at school!" quote:“I don’t think a tank could take out that old monster,” he agreed with another laugh. To her credit, despite his relatively small role Meyer definitely intended for Jacob to become the real member of the love triangle instead of Mike. It doesn't seem like she suddenly changed her mind when writing the sequel. quote:“Sorry,” I laughed, “I haven’t seen any lately, but I’ll keep my eyes open for you.” As if I knew what that was. He was very easy to talk with. Is it unfair to say that Mike would probably get into a duel with them? quote:“You mean Dr. Carlisle Cullen’s family?” the tall, older boy asked before I could respond, much to Lauren’s irritation. He was really closer to a man than a boy, and his voice was very deep. Trust me, she's always been like this. quote:“Oh, I’d say that’s an understatement.” I grimaced. He grinned understandingly. I'm imagining her doing this cartoonish eye flutter. quote:As we walked north across the multihued stones toward the driftwood seawall, the clouds finally closed ranks across the sky, causing the sea to darken and the temperature to drop. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jacket. Oh God she really did do that. quote:“I just turned fifteen,” he confessed, flattered. Taylor Lautner is 5'9. quote:“Do you come up to Forks much?” I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself. I was afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.  Big ol' Sam was played by the 33-year-old Chaske Spencer (I guess once you hit 18 in Hollywood you're now generically "young adult"). He's of mixed Native American descent and grew up on the Fort Peck reservation in Montana. Like many Native Americans on reservations, he suffered from severe drug addiction and often resorted to robbery for drug money. He got a few acting roles beginning with Skins in 2002 and voiced Shadow Wolf in Red Dead Revolver, but he constantly lost out on opportunities from showing up to auditions high or drunk. He finally got clean just in time to audition for New Moon, which solidified his acting career that has continued to this day with roles on shows like Banshee, Blindspot, and Jessica Jones. He's also a Sun Dance practitioner, something that he credits with forcing himself to stay sober. quote:“What was that he was saying about the doctor’s family?” I asked innocently. This is one of the things that gets brought up as an example of Bella showing sociopathic traits. It gets much worse in the sequels, but she regularly fakes emotion to manipulate people. quote:He smiled back, though, looking allured. Then he lifted one eyebrow and his voice was even huskier than before. Hoo boy. Here we go. The Quileute are a real Native American tribe on the La Push reservation. Wolves are indeed central to their belief system; warriors once belonged to the Wolf Society, a secret society with days-long initiations and elaborate ceremonies. Only about 2000 remain and their language was considered extinct by 1999, with efforts being made to try and revitalize it among the new generation using books written by now-deceased elders. Along with her grievous misrepresentations of Quileute culture that have offended them, Meyer has also caused unexpected problems for the tribe due to her books' popularity. While Forks has seen an explosion in popularity and tourism, the natives on the reservation see little of it. People show up, sure, but most of the tourist dollars go to white residents offering tours and selling merchandise based on Quileute designs and culture. The Burke Museum even collaborated with the tribe on Truth vs. Twilight, a segment of their website dedicated to dispelling misconceptions engendered by the books and highlighting how the tribe has received little to no benefit from being used. quote:“Then there are the stories about the cold ones.” His voice dropped a little lower. I should point out that we're 124 pages into the book and have only now gotten any information on Edward being a vampire, despite the back of the book telling everyone it's a vampire love story and Edward having done overtly supernatural things constantly. quote:I stared at him earnestly, hoping to disguise my impatience as admiration. Have an appreciation for drama, Bella. quote:“So you see,” Jacob continued, “the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather’s time was different. They didn’t hunt the way others of their kind did—they weren’t supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn’t expose them to the pale-faces.” He winked at me. Despite becoming a werewolf later on, at this point Jacob legitimately doesn't believe in any of the tribal legends. quote:“I’ll take it to the grave,” I promised, and then I shivered. Just some mildly racist stereotypes from the Mormon woman here. quote:I turned and smiled at him as normally as I could. I think the count of how many people in this book who don't like Bella instantly despite her ineptitude and rudeness is currently at 1. quote:“So when I get my license…,” he began. I can assure you that she doesn't feel real guilt. She spends most of New Moon continuing to manipulate Jacob for attention. quote:Mike had reached us now, with Jessica still a few paces back. I could see his eyes appraising Jacob, and looking satisfied at his obvious youth. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Sep 17, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
MorgaineDax posted:And yet Stephenie Meyer blows EL James out of the water with plot, characterization, dialogue, descriptions, pacing, grammar, everything. It's not calling Meyer good, but that's literally how terrible James' writing is. That’s why I wanted to start with Twilight before doing the Fifty Shades series. They started as a fanfic, so you get to see the same basic building blocks of the series and very similar characters (it’s often obvious who each person is meant to be) handled with even more ineptitude and even more overtly abusive relationships.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2019 00:55
|
|
|
Chapter 7: Nightmarequote:I told Charlie I had a lot of homework to do, and that I didn’t want anything to eat. There was a basketball game on that he was excited about, though of course I had no idea what was special about it, so he wasn’t aware of anything unusual in my face or tone. Bella Swan probably unironically says "sportsball." quote:Once in my room, I locked the door. I dug through my desk until I found my old headphones, and I plugged them into my little CD player. I picked up a CD that Phil had given to me for Christmas. It was one of his favorite bands, but they used a little too much bass and shrieking for my tastes. I popped it into place and lay down on my bed. I put on the headphones, hit Play, and turned up the volume until it hurt my ears. I closed my eyes, but the light still intruded, so I added a pillow over the top half of my face. I want to declare it canon that Phil gave Bella some ridiculous prog rock band like King Crimson. quote:I opened my eyes to a familiar place. Aware in some corner of my consciousness that I was dreaming, I recognized the green light of the forest. I could hear the waves crashing against the rocks somewhere nearby. And I knew that if I found the ocean, I’d be able to see the sun. I was trying to follow the sound, but then Jacob Black was there, tugging on my hand, pulling me back toward the blackest part of the forest. This is a classic example of an extremely lazy writing technique: prophetic dreams. They're especially common in works where there's no canon reason for the person to have dreams that are such exact foreshadowing and (like in this one) contain information that the dreamer shouldn't logically know. Instead of finding a way to work Bella's conflict between Jacob and Edward and her confirmation that Edward is a vampire into her characterization and actions, or figure out a way to let her inner monologue ruminate on it better, she just has a dream that conveniently reveals how the rest of the story is going to go. quote:The wolf launched himself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming for the jugular. Then why the hell did you fall asleep fully dressed with the lights on? quote:I rolled back over and unbuttoned my jeans, yanking them off awkwardly as I tried to stay horizontal. I could feel the braid in my hair, an uncomfortable ridge along the back of my skull. I turned onto my side and ripped the rubber band out, quickly combing through the plaits with my fingers. I pulled the pillow back over my eyes. Why did Bella make her bed? Who knows! quote:I hated using the Internet here. My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited. I'm going to stick with my headcanon and play "21st Century Schizoid Man" while making this post. I imagine it'll make the text much better. quote:With another sigh, I turned to my computer. Naturally, the screen was covered in pop-up ads. I sat in my hard folding chair and began closing all the little windows. Eventually I made it to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in one word. Yes, Bella's brilliant plan is to Google vampires. She also must have gotten a pretty terrible virus if her screen is covered in pop-ups as soon as she connects to the Internet. quote:It took an infuriatingly long time, of course. When the results came up, there was a lot to sift through—everything from movies and TV shows to role-playing games, underground metal, and gothic cosmetic companies. Wikipedia started in 2001 and was available in 161 languages by 2004. Bella is just dumb. quote:Then I found a promising site—Vampires A–Z. I waited impatiently for it to load, quickly clicking closed each ad that flashed across the screen. Finally the screen was finished—simple white background with black text, academic-looking. Two quotes greeted me on the home page: Most people at least vaguely know Rousseau as a philosopher. Reverend Montague Summers was an early 20th century scholar on vampires, werewolves, witches, and other supernatural creatures who provided the first English translation of Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century witch hunter's manual. Summers was an avowed believer in all manners of the supernatural and wrote his books very seriously. quote:The rest of the site was an alphabetized listing of all the different myths of vampires held throughout the world. The first I clicked on, the Danag, was a Filipino vampire supposedly responsible for planting taro on the islands long ago. The myth continued that the Danag worked with humans for many years, but the partnership ended one day when a woman cut her finger and a Danag sucked her wound, enjoying the taste so much that it drained her body completely of blood. As far as I know, the Stregoni benefici is an invention of Meyer's. I don't know why this is even necessary, as it does nothing to amplify the idea of the Cullens not killing people. If anything, it just removes tension by foreshadowing that the Cullens aren't dangerous at all. quote:Overall, though, there was little that coincided with Jacob’s stories or my own observations. I’d made a little catalogue in my mind as I’d read and carefully compared it with each myth. Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob’s criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal. There were very few myths that matched even one factor. Imagine being a first time reader, not knowing how they were going to explain Edward being out in the daytime. quote:Aggravated, I snapped off the computer’s main power switch, not waiting to shut things down properly. Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me? I decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks—and the entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter. What the gently caress kind of sense does that make? quote:I had to get out of the house, but there was nowhere I wanted to go that didn’t involve a three-day drive. I pulled on my boots anyway, unclear where I was headed, and went downstairs. I shrugged into my raincoat without checking the weather and stomped out the door. And then she tripped on like five rocks. quote:There was a thin ribbon of a trail that led through the forest here, or I wouldn’t risk wandering on my own like this. My sense of direction was hopeless; I could get lost in much less helpful surroundings. I think you meant much more hopeful surroundings, Meyer. quote:The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly east as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples. I only vaguely knew the names of the trees around me, and all I knew was due to Charlie pointing them out to me from the cruiser window in earlier days. There were many I didn’t know, and others I couldn’t be sure about because they were so covered in green parasites. With Bella's awful sense of direction and clumsiness, I wouldn't be surprised if stepping even three feet off the path gets her hopelessly lost. quote:Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom. This length of time this book is taking on figuring out if the Cullens are vampires would be a lot more acceptable if it was a legitimate mystery. If the back of the book tells you that they are, we're instead spending dozens or hundreds of pages waiting for the protagonist to figure out what we already knew before we even bought the book. It's been 4 chapters since Edward did something overtly supernatural for the first time and got confronted about it and we still don't have a resolution! quote:Well, they were something. Something outside the possibility of rational justification was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes. Whether it be Jacob’s cold ones or my own superhero theory, Edward Cullen was not… human. He was something more. You barely even know the guy! He's been having mood swings out the yin-yang and physically abused you once already, and you've hardly spoken over three months! Finding out that he's probably also a vampire should be the best excuse for avoiding him! quote:I could do nothing different. After all, if he was something… sinister, he’d done nothing to hurt me so far. Are we all just going to forget that he physically dragged you into his car and threatened to kidnap you if you refused? quote:In fact, I would be a dent in Tyler’s fender if he hadn’t acted so quickly. So quickly, I argued with myself, that it might have been sheer reflexes. But if it was a reflex to save lives, how bad could he be? I retorted. My head spun around in answerless circles. This is where we seriously start getting into Meyer's romanticization of abuse. Edward and Bella's actions are consistently handwaved away as just signs of how much they love and care about each other, no matter how dangerous that behavior is in real life. To Bella, it doesn't matter that Edward has been displaying more red flags than a Chinese military parade. He reflexively saved her from danger, and that's all that matters to show his "true nature." quote:There was one thing I was sure of, if I was sure of anything. The dark Edward in my dream last night was a reflection only of my fear of the word Jacob had spoken, and not Edward himself. Even so, when I’d screamed out in terror at the werewolf’s lunge, it wasn’t fear for the wolf that brought the cry of “no” to my lips. It was fear that he would be harmed—even as he called to me with sharp-edged fangs, I feared for him. Had this been a different book, this would be portrayed as the thoughts of a poor young girl falling under the spell of a man who would hurt her worse than she would ever imagine. With only a small amount of interaction (much of it negative or outright threatening), she's already become completely obsessed with Edward. But as we all know, the books paint their relationship as pure love between soulmates. Her obsession is instead shown as a good thing that leads her to a life of power and prosperity as long as she can handle all the poo poo the relationship throws at her. quote:Not here, alone in the darkening forest. Not while the rain made it dim as twilight under the canopy and pattered like footsteps across the matted earthen floor. I shivered and rose quickly from my place of concealment, worried that somehow the path would have disappeared with the rain. Again, the constant decrying of Bella's behavior as dangerous or stupid would be more palatable if it was ever shown as anything but the best decision she ever made. Bella's obsession with Edward is followed up on in New Moon by revealing that Bella essentially gets off on danger. Her desires for him are amplified by both his status as unattainable and a dangerous threat to her life. At the same time, she has very low self-esteem despite her selfishness (count how many times she berates herself for her clumsiness or supposed unattractiveness even as half the male population of the town chases after her) that immediately gives the beautiful, dangerous Edward Cullen a position of power over her. Had she not been in Forks, the kind of guys she would have gotten wrapped up with would have been the kind to seriously hurt her. quote:And so the day was quiet, productive—I finished my paper before eight. Charlie came home with a large catch, and I made a mental note to pick up a book of recipes for fish while I was in Seattle next week. The chills that flashed up my spine whenever I thought of that trip were no different than the ones I’d felt before I’d taken my walk with Jacob Black. They should be different, I thought. I should be afraid—I knew I should be, but I couldn’t feel the right kind of fear. It took a smile to get you to realize that? Charlies has been nothing but the sweetest, most doting father anyone could ask for no matter what his selfish, childish ex-wife and daughter did to hurt him. You've somehow managed to estrange yourself from a dad that anyone here would be lucky to have. quote:I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust motes stirring in the sunlight that streamed in the back window. Charlie called out a goodbye, and I heard the cruiser pull away from the house. I hesitated on my way out the door, hand on my rain jacket. It would be tempting fate to leave it home. With a sigh, I folded it over my arm and stepped out into the brightest light I’d seen in months. So much of Bella's behavior reinforces her creepiness and possible mental illness. quote:“Bella!” I heard someone call, and it sounded like Mike. I looked around to realize that the school had become populated while I’d been sitting there, absentminded. Everyone was in t-shirts, some even in shorts though the temperature couldn’t be over sixty. Mike was coming toward me in khaki shorts and a striped Rugby shirt, waving. Mike that is the worst goddamn outfit ever. quote:“Hey, Mike,” I called, waving back, unable to be halfhearted on a morning like this. But you're not uncomfortable with kidnapping. quote:“Great day, isn’t it?” So instead you'll just be smug to the readers like always, right? quote:He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Oh yeah—that’s due Thursday, right?” He's wondering how a Stephenie Meyer protagonist could ever understand misogyny. quote:“I guess I’ll have to get to work on that tonight,” he said, deflated. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go out.” I would take her seriously, Mike. This girl is really violent. quote:He was bewildered, obviously not thinking in that direction at all. If you think Bella's separation anxiety is bad now, wait until the second book. quote:I shambled along behind Jessica, not bothering to pretend to listen anymore. Again, we're retreading common ground. This is a virtual repeat of the earlier scene where she sees that Edward isn't around and spends the day wailing and gnashing her teeth before being clumsy in gym. quote:I was glad to leave campus, so I would be free to pout and mope before I went out tonight with Jessica and company. But right after I walked in the door of Charlie’s house, Jessica called to cancel our plans. I tried to be happy that Mike had asked her out to dinner—I really was relieved that he finally seemed to be catching on—but my enthusiasm sounded false in my own ears. She rescheduled our shopping trip for tomorrow night. Again, this is exactly how it's formatted in the book. I thought Bella's internal monologue was part of the email at first. How did an editor not catch this? Is it different on paper? quote:I decided to kill an hour with non-school-related reading. I had a small collection of books that came with me to Forks, the shabbiest volume being a compilation of the works of Jane Austen. I selected that one and headed to the backyard, grabbing a ragged old quilt from the linen cupboard at the top of the stairs on my way down. If you're wondering why Bella has the feeling she isn't alone, I checked Midnight Sun. Yeah, it's exactly who you think. quote:I watched TV with Charlie after dinner, for something to do. There wasn’t anything on I wanted to watch, but he knew I didn’t like baseball, so he turned it to some mindless sitcom that neither of us enjoyed. He seemed happy, though, to be doing something together. And it felt good, despite my depression, to make him happy. Oh gently caress off. quote:“Well, okay.” He seemed to realize that he was out of his depth with the girlie stuff. “It’s a school night, though.” Port Angeles is only an hour's drive from Forks. It's a town of about 19,000 people on the north coast, across the water from British Columbia. quote:"We’ll leave right after school, so we can get back early. You’ll be okay for dinner, right?” I feel like Bella being mean to her dad is the most aggravating of all the bad behavior she displays. He deserves it the least. quote:It was sunny again in the morning. I awakened with renewed hope that I grimly tried to suppress. I dressed for the warmer weather in a deep blue V-neck blouse—something I’d worn in the dead of winter in Phoenix. Why? He's already displayed far worse behavior than canceling at the last minute. quote:After school, Jessica followed me home in her old white Mercury so that I could ditch my books and truck. I brushed through my hair quickly when I was inside, feeling a slight lift of excitement as I contemplated getting out of Forks. I left a note for Charlie on the table, explaining again where to find dinner, switched my scruffy wallet from my school bag to a purse I rarely used, and ran out to join Jessica. We went to Angela’s house next, and she was waiting for us. My excitement increased exponentially as we actually drove out of the town limits.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2019 17:24
|
|
|
The fact that Meyer is so clueless about Bella's craziness makes me wonder if she may share similar traits, especially with Bella being a near self-insert. A lot of focus is given by critics to Edward's abuse being painted as just signs of love that Bella needs to understand, but less talking is done about her coming off as badly mentally ill. Bella's serious signs of Borderline Personality Disorder or even sociopathy are portrayed as quirks, generic flaws (because "every protagonist needs flaws!"), or signs of how special she is.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2019 22:09
|
|
|
 I already had a Seattle trip planned next year. I may or may not make a visit to Forks and La Push.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2019 01:58
|
|
|
Chapter 8: Port Angelesquote:Jess drove faster than the Chief, so we made it to Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I’d had a girls’ night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys we hung out with. Jessica’s dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I smiled to myself, pleased. Angela was passively happy to be going to the dance, but not really interested in Eric. Jess tried to get her to confess who her type was, but I interrupted with a question about dresses after a bit, to spare her. Angela threw a grateful glance my way. Meyer consistently demonstrates an extremely stereotypical view of gender that manifests in Bella's inner monologue. Despite her "not like the other girls" Mary Sue traits, she still talks about enjoying stereotypical girlish behavior and expects her father to be completely incapable of understanding her because of his masculinity (as opposed to just not understanding her completely undeserved dislike of him). quote:Port Angeles was a beautiful little tourist trap, much more polished and quaint than Forks. But Jessica and Angela knew it well, so they didn’t plan to waste time on the picturesque boardwalk by the bay. Jess drove straight to the one big department store in town, which was a few streets in from the bay area’s visitor-friendly face. "Seriously, none of our obsession with you makes sense." quote:We were in the juniors’ section now, scanning the racks for dress-up clothes. You're all 16 or 17. Why are you still so small that you need to shop in the children's section? quote:“Well, except for Tyler,” Angela amended quietly. In case you were wondering, no. This faux drama with Tyler being a weirdo never has any bearing on the plot and will only serve as a distraction from the vampire stuff. quote:“I told you it wasn’t true,” Angela murmured to Jessica. I thought it was because she needed to fill the quota of mundane mortal girls who don't immediately fawn over her? quote:I ground my teeth. “Do you think that if I ran him over with my truck he would stop feeling guilty about the accident? That he might give up on making amends and call it even?” "I'm not normally violent, but..." quote:“Maybe,” Jess snickered. “If that’s why he’s doing this.” Isn't this the most exciting book you've ever read? quote:We headed over to shoes and accessories. While they tried things on I merely watched and critiqued, not in the mood to shop for myself, though I did need new shoes. The girls’-night high was wearing off in the wake of my annoyance at Tyler, leaving room for the gloom to move back in. Just riveting. quote:I tried again. “Um, Angela…” She looked up curiously. I can think of a lot of follow-up questions for her to ask, like "Why is the school okay with their constantly poor attendance instead of reporting them as truant?" or "How do they keep up with schoolwork when they're on backpacking trips and disappearing for a week at a time?" quote:We planned to go to dinner at a little Italian restaurant on the boardwalk, but the dress shopping hadn’t taken as long as we’d expected. Jess and Angela were going to take their clothes back to the car and then walk down to the bay. I told them I would meet them at the restaurant in an hour—I wanted to look for a bookstore. They were both willing to come with me, but I encouraged them to go have fun—they didn’t know how preoccupied I could get when surrounded by books; it was something I preferred to do alone. They walked off to the car chattering happily, and I headed in the direction Jess pointed out. Bella's gotten over her worries about Edward being supernatural really quickly! After freaking out so badly that she was having nightmares, it only took one chapter for her to take it for granted and just keep on with her obsession. quote:I stomped along in a southerly direction, toward some glass-fronted shops that looked promising. But when I got to them, they were just a repair shop and a vacant space. I still had too much time to go looking for Jess and Angela yet, and I definitely needed to get my mood in hand before I met back up with them. I ran my fingers through my hair a couple of times and took some deep breaths before I continued around the corner. "Ugh, dad, I can read a map! Why do you think my sense of direction is so bad that I can't drive 4 hours one way to Seattle and get around by myself? Phoenix is so much bigger!" quote:A group of four men turned around the corner I was heading for, dressed too casually to be heading home from the office, but they were too grimy to be tourists. As they approached me, I realized they weren’t too many years older than I was. They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other’s arms. I scooted as far to the inside of the sidewalk as I could to give them room, walking swiftly, looking past them to the corner.  The commercial district for Port Angeles is a single T-shaped area with the bulk in a dense section on the waterfront. It's surrounded on all sides by residential and harbor areas. There is absolutely no way for a reasonable person to somehow start going south "looking for downtown" and then accidentally wander deep into an industrial area trying to get back. quote:The sky suddenly darkened further, and, as I looked over my shoulder to glare at the offending cloud, I realized with a shock that two men were walking quietly twenty feet behind me. Bella you've been here for months! You still haven't unpacked? quote:I listened intently to their quiet footsteps, which were much too quiet when compared to the boisterous noise they’d been making earlier, and it didn’t sound like they were speeding up, or getting any closer to me. Breathe, I had to remind myself. You don’t know they’re following you. I continued to walk as quickly as I could without actually running, focusing on the right-hand turn that was only a few yards away from me now. I could hear them, staying as far back as they’d been before. A blue car turned onto the street from the south and drove quickly past me. I thought of jumping out in front of it, but I hesitated, inhibited, unsure that I was really being pursued, and then it was too late. Bella that is the worst idea for avoiding these guys. quote:I reached the corner, but a swift glance revealed that it was only a blind drive to the back of another building. I was half-turned in anticipation; I had to hurriedly correct and dash across the narrow drive, back to the sidewalk. The street ended at the next corner, where there was a stop sign. I concentrated on the faint footsteps behind me, deciding whether or not to run. They sounded farther back, though, and I knew they could outrun me in any case. I was sure to trip and go sprawling if I tried to go any faster. The footfalls were definitely farther back. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, and they were maybe forty feet back now, I saw with relief. But they were both staring at me. I don't think this is a tactic that happens much in real life? Then again, maybe they realized how dumb Bella was when it came to directions. quote:I paused for only a second, but it felt like a very long time. I turned then and darted to the other side of the road. I had a sinking feeling that it was a wasted attempt. The footsteps behind me were louder now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwyBW9-we5A quote:The thickset man shrugged away from the wall as I warily came to a stop, and walked slowly into the street. Meyer essentially admits that she has a way out of this scene that doesn't require her to be saved and can give her some level of agency for the first time in the whole goddamn story, but still writes around it. It also comes off uncharacteristically meek, as Bella has spent much of the book seriously fantasizing about hurting people and damaging property. Maybe she's one of those who can only do it if the victim isn't resisting? quote:Headlights suddenly flew around the corner, the car almost hitting the stocky one, forcing him to jump back toward the sidewalk. I dove into the road—this car was going to stop, or have to hit me. Why does she keep thinking you can escape danger by leaping in front of cars?! quote:But the silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet from me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07ivInGpyI Here's the scene in the film. For all the problems with it, it does fix a lot of issues with Meyer's writing. One of them is letting Bella actually start fighting these guys off instead of cowering. quote:But I felt utterly safe and, for the moment, totally unconcerned about where we were going. I stared at his face in profound relief, relief that went beyond my sudden deliverance. I studied his flawless features in the limited light, waiting for my breath to return to normal, until it occurred to me that his expression was murderously angry. While he's supposed to be angry because Bella's presence prevented him from killing all of them, I want to assume that he just can't figure out how she managed to wander this way looking for the waterfront. quote:I sat in silence, watching his face while his blazing eyes stared straight ahead, until the car came to a sudden stop. I glanced around, but it was too dark to see anything beside the vague outline of dark trees crowding the roadside. We weren’t in town anymore. Bella would be the easiest victim a serial killer ever had. quote:“Bella?” he asked, his voice tight, controlled. The book hasn't done enough of that already? quote:“Um.” I wracked my brain for something trivial. “I’m going to run over Tyler Crowley tomorrow before school?” Maybe Bella is so into Edward because he'll hurt people for her instead. quote:Edward sighed, and finally opened his eyes. Is there a single interaction Edward and Bella have had that wasn't completely full of red flags? quote:“At least,” he continued, “that’s what I’m trying to convince myself.” For most people, that would be silently dialing 911 on their phone. quote:We sat in silence again. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was past six-thirty. Bella Italia is a real restaurant in Port Angeles, but the scenes in the town were filmed in St. Helens, OR. quote:“How did you know where…?” I began, but then I just shook my head. I heard the door open and turned to see him getting out. Am I the only one finding this entire thing utterly disgusting and disturbing? I'm seriously starting to wonder what's wrong with Stephenie Meyer if this is the kind of relationship she wants to portray for her readers to fantasize about. quote:“Jess! Angela!” I yelled after them, waving when they turned. They rushed back to me, the pronounced relief on both their faces simultaneously changing to surprise as they saw who I was standing next to. They hesitated a few feet from us. I know it's absolutely not how Meyer meant it, but this dialogue reminds me way too much of abusive relationships where the guy is subtly nudging the girl to say the right things to separate herself from anyone who could protect her. quote:“Uh, no problem, I guess…” She bit her lip, trying to figure out from my expression whether that was what I wanted. I winked at her. I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior. There were so many questions that I couldn’t bombard him with till we were by ourselves. Is the "or I'll stab you" just implied? quote:He walked to the door of the restaurant and held it open with an obstinate expression. Obviously, there would be no further discussion. I walked past him into the restaurant with a resigned sigh. What is it with her thing against blondes? quote:“A table for two?” His voice was alluring, whether he was aiming for that or not. I saw her eyes flicker to me and then away, satisfied by my obvious ordinariness, and by the cautious, no-contact space Edward kept between us. She led us to a table big enough for four in the center of the most crowded area of the dining floor. I feel like you shouldn't need to slip a waitress a twenty to get her to put you at a booth on a dead night. quote:“Sure.” She sounded as surprised as I was. She turned and led us around a partition to a small ring of booths—all of them empty. “How’s this?” Midnight Sun reveals, oddly, that Edward is actually attempting to scare people by doing things like smiling with full teeth. He's somehow consistently confused as to why they find him hot instead of terrifying. quote:He ignored my questions. “Do I dazzle you?” And this is where he reveals that he poisoned her in the car and is taking her back to his attic, right? quote:“I don’t think that will happen,” I said after I could breathe again. “I’ve always been very good at repressing unpleasant things.” Man, you've barely spoken and you're already at the stage of your relationship where he orders you around! quote:I sipped at my soda obediently, and then drank more deeply, surprised by how thirsty I was. I realized I had finished the whole thing when he pushed his glass toward me. This isn't an exaggeration or deception. Edward really believes Bella should be passing out from shock right now and that her thirst is a symptom. If he was that concerned, shouldn't he be getting her medical help instead of letting her faint into her mushroom ravioli? quote:“You should be—a normal person would be. You don’t even look shaken.” He seemed unsettled. He stared into my eyes, and I saw how light his eyes were, lighter than I’d ever seen them, golden butterscotch. I just keep picturing a serial killer trying to get Bella sufficiently afraid for him to feel right when killing her, and she just keeps smiling and talking about how great he is and he gets so frustrated. quote:I picked up a breadstick and began nibbling on the end, measuring his expression. I wondered when it would be okay to start questioning him.  quote:“Sure.” She removed the empty glasses and walked away. Another common flaw with amateur writers is making a script instead of a book. In order to flesh out the world, the author puts in massive amounts of detail about what everyone is doing at any given time, exactly what everything looks like and what they're all wearing, and hand-holding the reader with the emotions and inflection everyone is supposed to be speaking with. quote:“Well, go ahead,” he pushed, his voice still hard. Yet another good way to start a relationship: don't even try to come up with a plausible excuse for your stalking and just refuse to answer any questions. quote:I looked down, frustrated. I unrolled my silverware, picked up my fork, and carefully speared a ravioli. I put it in my mouth slowly, still looking down, chewing while I thought. The mushrooms were good. I swallowed and took another sip of Coke before I looked up. Again, this is an entire paragraph that's pointless. Every single chapter and my commentary comes close to the 50,000 character post limit because of how much extraneous detail she puts in. quote:“Okay, then.” I glared at him, and continued slowly. “Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that… someone… could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know—with a few exceptions.” Even Edward can't believe this poo poo. quote:“We were speaking of a hypothetical case,” I reminded him frostily. And if it doesn't find her, she'll seek it out on purpose to fulfill a perverse pleasure! quote:“And you put yourself into that category?” I guessed. Bella will not only go for three before the book ends, but by the end of the series the amount of times she has to be saved is uncountable. quote:“I followed you to Port Angeles,” he admitted, speaking in a rush. “I’ve never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it’s much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that’s probably just because it’s you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes.” He paused. I wondered if it should bother me that he was following me; instead I felt a strange surge of pleasure. He stared, maybe wondering why my lips were curving into an involuntary smile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DizNtj09VcM quote:“That wasn’t the first time,” he said, and his voice was hard to hear. I stared at him in amazement, but he was looking down. “Your number was up the first time I met you.” "Seriously, your danger fetish is starting to worry me." quote:“Yes, here I sit… because of you.” I paused. “Because somehow you knew how to find me today…?” I prompted. Even his dramatic gestures have super speed! quote:“It was very… hard—you can’t imagine how hard—for me to simply take you away, and leave them… alive.” His voice was muffled by his arm. “I could have let you go with Jessica and Angela, but I was afraid if you left me alone, I would go looking for them,” he admitted in a whisper. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Sep 24, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2019 16:14
|
|
|
The_White_Crane posted:Does he... ever actually do this on the page? His dialogue feels more like when a teenager who reads a lot decides to be extremely proper with their grammar and start using words they just learned.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2019 16:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:29 |
|
|
PsychedelicWarlord posted:this is so much more terrifying to read as someone who has now experienced healthy adult relationships than it was when I was 11. someone please rescue this girl I know we set out to try and treat this series fairly and look for redeeming qualities, but man did it exceed my expectations. Not only is it as bad as is claimed, it's even worse!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2019 19:12
|
|